we all know bilbo is an unreliable narrator as he’s writing his story from his perspective years later, with knowledge of the significance of the events that occurred and how he impacted them (especially when we look at the story of the one ring) but like, how did he remember all of those details? we know bilbo’s observant, but he’s also very stressed out all of the time and that makes it hard to remember things.
i personally like to think that bilbo kept a series of journals during the journey, the first abandoned in the wood elves palace (and was a journal that formerly functioned as a ledger), the second kept during the siege of the lonely mountain.
the journals are hundreds of pages of short passive-aggressive ramblings on dwarves and dragons and adventures and food with multiple mental breakdowns sprinkled in. there are at least fifteen poems on the stupidity of dwarves. he has pages upon pages of painstaking analysis on the riddle game. he keeps tallies for every butterfly he sees. his grammar either gets progressively better or progressively worse. at some point he just writes “IT’S HAPPENING” with no date and no other context.

























