The Fellowship gets on the topic of their ages one night and Boromir comes to the dawning realization that he has absolutely no idea how old any of his companions are supposed to be at all
Boromir, pointing at the hobbits: I don’t know how your ages work
Boromir, pointing at Legolas and Gimli: I definitely don’t know how either of your ages work
Boromir, pointing at Aragorn: I thought I knew how your age worked but apparentlyI was wrong
Boromir, pointing at Gandalf: I especially don’t know how your age works
Gandalf: It doesn’t, but carry on
Listen I will die on this hill. I don’t care what it says in the assorted apocrypha, if you go by the Actual Text of LOTR you can make a very good argument that Boromir is the youngest member of the group.
The hobbits are the only ones given official ages in the text, and are between fifty or fifty-one and twenty-nine. Elves and dwarves notoriously age slowly, and Gimli is the offspring of one of Bilbo’s pals, so okay, we’ve established that he’s old enough to call the hobbits young, and Bilbo confirms for them that Aragorn is Pretty Old For A Bigjobs. Gandalf is, of course, eternal.
But we are never given any context for Boromir and Faramir’s ages, except that a) they are humans and, though Sons of Gondor, not much longer lived than most Bigjobs, and b) Faramir is A QuiteYoung Man. I was absolutely convinced, when I read the books as a youngun, that Boromir, being in ‘the flower of manhood’ iirc, was probably between 25 and 30.
And it would be Freaking Hilarious, okay, for Boromir to finally get around to actually asking how old this baby-faced hobbit carrying The Ring is, and get told ‘oh, he’s only fifty, but he’s very steady for his age.’
Boromir: ?!?!?!
And then Pippin and Merry start asking everyone how old they are because this is fascinating are we all official adults here except for Pippin or what.
Boromir: …. Pippin isn’t an adult HOW OLD IS PIPPIN.
Pippin is just 29, which is why everyone calls him Pippin, it’s gonna be at least another 20 years before he can make Peregrine work. Why, how old is Boromir?
Boromir, who would rather DIE than admit to being 28 right at this moment: ….43.
All the others, weighing up his apparent age compared to theirs: Sure, sounds legit.
Gandalf, who knows for certain, does not say anything because he is absolutely certain that telling Pippin that he’s older than Boromir will be an unmitigated disaster.
BOROMIR is the BABY???????!!!!!!!
Love the take that Boromir’s canon age is just him being a fucking liar.
The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply.
significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.
that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).
the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start "rewarding” the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.
Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail.
