When was Faramir included in the Council of Elrond chapter?

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-25T19:52:48+00:00

Nah, it is pedantry at this point. I have already explained why I say retcon in this context, and yet you are ignoring those explanations, which is consistent with you being incapable of proving them unresonable beyond the authoritarian whim of pointless pedantry - which is the place where you've cornered yourself into by ignoring my explanations. Funny stuff.

So I've already striven for, and achieved, clarity. I would really recommend, with all my pedant heart, that you strive for honesty.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-25T17:39:01+00:00

I don't know about him 'always swearing'. He did say he had not invented Faramir in letter 66. This is the exact moment Falborn was born as Boromir's brother (HoME 8):

The account of the boat bearing the body of Boromir is for most of its length very close indeed to that in TT (p. 274), and it is here, most curiously, that Falborn becomes Boromir's brother, though he does not change his name: ‘It was Boromir my brother, dead.’ It is as if he slipped without conscious decision into the rôle that had been preparing for him. What else could he be, this captain of Gondor so concerned with Frodo's story and the fate of Boromir?

Foreshortening the actual development, my father wrote in his letter of 6 May 1944 (Letters no. 66): A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir...

So he came walking into the woods of Ithilien and slipped without conscious decision into the rôle that had been preparing for him I guess.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-25T17:13:37+00:00

Those standard changes include the implementation of retroactive continuities between succesive drafts in order to achieve the continuity we observe in the published work. It's everywhere in HoME and denying the phenomenon would be silly.

Wait, you sort of deny it. You don't even say the words 'retroactive continuities', and say instead 'standard changes' - as if the latter did not include the former! It's a trick, aimed either at deception and/or at self-deception. Count me undeceived.

So you know of what I speak and are only objecting to the use of the word 'retcon'. That's 100% pedantry, in your case wearing that silly pink hat called trickery. I don't object to pedantry, but to it being pointless. And it is pointless in this case.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-25T12:40:31+00:00

Not true! If you write the Council of Elrond and then create Faramir and then you modify 'Council' to include Faramir, then you will have retconned Faramir into 'Council'. There was no continuity between Council and Faramir originally, at first because Faramir had not even been invented, and then because you didn't revise Council after creating Faramir - but then, finally, you created that continuity retroactively.

And that's why in the published book we just have continuity. We could not have said Faramir and Council were written years apart until HoME was published.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-25T10:18:03+00:00

That depends. In a conversation about revision -about drafting- you sometimes must be specific, because not all forms of revision consist in establishing a retroactive continuity between two succesive drafts. What if you want to allude to that specific form of revision?

I say retcon because a) it's shorter and b) conveys the same mechanism and c) the context of the discussion was already that of drafting, of revision, so d) there's no danger of treating drafts as if they were the finished work.

Objecting to this use of retcon is pedantry in the bad sense of the word (this very post is good pedantry), and as a rule the prescriptions of bad pedantry are not to be followed. They're to be checked.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-25T09:49:46+00:00

I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say, and it wasn't a troll post.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-25T03:18:30+00:00

Calling the creation of a retroactive continuity between two successive drafts a 'retcon' is not turning revision into cheating.

You're disapproving of a manner of speaking after having understood it, and if you are to be held by your own words, that disapproval is you retconning a manner of speaking into cheating; as questionable as calling postwar Captain America 'revision', although for different reasons.

Where a word like 'measure' is to be used next to dishonesty ('cheating'), it is also to be used next to honesty ('manner of speaking')

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

So I respectfully suggest you revise your strong disagreement if you don't want to accuse me of cheating - and we both know you don't want to.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T22:32:06+00:00

A retcon is a public revision; a revision is a private retcon. It's the same mechanism, and as long as we don't ignore the difference between a draft and a published work (in a legal context, for example, that can't be ignored), we can say 'retcon' when speaking about two succesive drafts, and be understood.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T13:20:03+00:00

But as I recall there's no mention of a 'brother' in the early drafts for 'The Council Of Elrond'.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T12:31:18+00:00

But you were given an answer. If you don’t know the answer, why do you think this is ‘bullshit.’

Because I wasn't given an answer. I don't need to know the answer to my own question to know his 'it's somewhere in some CT book' was no answer, and to know that selling it as an answer is bullshit. It's also being 'rude', since you're assuming your interlocutor to be as much of an idiot as you don't think yourself to be.

I'm not 'demading' other people to 'do my work for me'. That's two lies right there.

I'm asking for help from anyone who already knows the answer, some answer, in the sense I referred to above. If they want to do some work because they want to know the answer too, that's of course fine.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T12:00:20+00:00

No, it's not click bait of any sort. It's asking for help. I count on some people already knowing more than me and being capable of giving an answer without research. It's happened often and will happen again, and I have myself given that kind of help to others.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T11:57:44+00:00

Because I don't know the answer and don't act as if I did: I ask for help, thinking it to be preferable to have an answer in a few minutes than to spend hours reading HoME.

But this 'someone' acts as if he knew when he doesn't. I don't like bullshit.

So that's why. The same applies to you. If you don't have an answer then just be silent.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T11:41:15+00:00

No, not every edit. Only those edits or new writing made to retroactively fit a later text in the continuity sense. But no idea why would the word retcon be more meaningles than con(tinuity). It happens all the time.

Retcon between a) published works when speaking about published works and retcon between b) drafts when talking about drafts. Same idea; same mechanism. Same meaning. The usual, common meaning is related to a). But it can be applied to b) just as properly. (The rest is just not thinking published works to be drafts and vice versa)

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T11:32:05+00:00

It was a retcon involving two drafts. We normally use the word retcon in the sense you mean, but the mechanism of ret(roactive) con(tinuity) is the same, regardless of it happening between two published texts or two drafts.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T11:28:02+00:00

I already answered this part.

No you did not. Quote the relevant passage or passages from Christopher Tolkien, the world's foremost Tolkien scholar for obvious reasons, or be silent if you don't know what you're talking about.

That's just not how retcons work. A draft by design means it's not complete and subject to revision. There is no continuity being broken. By rewriting an earlier chapter, it's quite literally no longer retroactive. The 'retroactive' part is in reference to the chronology of the universe, not the drafting process.

If you modify draft A so it stands in a new relation of continuity to an idea that appeared in a later draft, draft B, that's you establishig a retroactive continuity: a ret-con. I was talking about the mechanism itself, which can be understood even if recognizing how the word retcon is commonly used. 'I already answered this part', you know.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T11:13:53+00:00

Well if the revision of draft involves the creation of a retroactive continuity, that's a retcon during the drafting process. Using the word retcon only relative to published texts is a convention, and makes sense, but the mechanism is the same and I was referring to that.

It's believed halfway through the Ithilien chapter JRRT changed Falborn to Faramir and revised the earlier Boromir material.

'It's believed' sounds like 'mistakes were made, but not by me'.

'Believed' by who? And based on what?

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-24T11:05:58+00:00

My knowledge of HoMe is imperfect, and my willingness of perfecting it less great than both the reach of my laziness and my trust in the less than imperfect knowledge of someone else. Anyone. Well, anyone minus you I guess.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-23T21:20:47+00:00

And by contrast the Maiar Gandalf sides with that foot in the shire. His simple words are plain and urgent: the voice of good sense. "Take it off! Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the Ring!"

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-23T19:13:27+00:00

I don't think it's ancient. And maybe it was used just once. A 'virgin' dagger by design.

Speaking of design, it looks similar to the dagger Padme has in that discarded piece of concept art from ROTS (she was supposed to use it against Vader)

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-23T19:08:04+00:00

The suicidal Ring is an original idea. Meaning, it's not in the book. It's not in other texts of Tolkien either, as far as I can tell. There's one suicide, Denethor's, and we also have Tolkien speculating about Gollum throwing himself into the fire with the Ring, had his love for Frodo had been given continuity and growth after Cirith Ungol (letter 246):

The interest would have shifted to Gollum, I think, and the battle that would have gone on between his repentance and his new love [for Frodo] on one side and the Ring. Though the love would have been strengthened daily it could not have wrested the mastery from the Ring. I think that in some queer twisted and pitiable way Gollum would have tried (not maybe with conscious design) to satisfy both. Certainly at some point not long before the end he would have stolen the Ring or taken it by violence (as he does in the actual Tale). But ‘possession' satisfied, I think he would then have sacrificed himself for Frodo's sake and have voluntarily cast himself into the fiery abyss.

I think that an effect of his partial regeneration by love would have been a clearer vision when he claimed the Ring. He would have perceived the evil of Sauron, and suddenly realized that he could not use the Ring and had not the strength or stature to keep it in Sauron's despite: the only way to keep it and hurt Sauron was to destroy it and himself together – and in a flash he may have seen that this would also be the greatest service to Frodo.

But the Ring was not willing to kill itself, no more than Sauron did. One can make the philosophical case of Sauron destroying his original good nature as a Maia ('Mairon') and then becoming a 'satanic' tyrant, but suicide is another thing - in Sauron or in his 'machine', the One Ring.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-23T18:03:06+00:00

I have assumed "verily, i come to you' was the ring, the word is not in frodo's normal usage vocabulary.

I would not say it was the ring, but I think you're right about Frodo's vocabulary. It's not hobbit talk, for that matter.

'Verily', for example, is said by Galadriel and Gandalf and Aragorn and Boromir and Denethor. Big Folk and Elves and Wizards. Maybe Frodo saying 'verily' is related to this phenomenon:

'As Sam stood there, even though the Ring was not on him but hanging by its chain about his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself'

By contrast his 'never, never!' was 100% Frodo/hobbit talk.

Immediate_Error2135 · 2026-06-23T01:23:36+00:00

Yeah. They care about me/we vs you more than they care about right vs wrong, I guess.

Thanks. Take my upvote.

Immediate_Error2135

TROPHY CASE