Pardon me while I beat a dead horse but it’s just SO funny how Tolkien was trying to think of a way to continue the fun little universe he invented, and right off the bat he was like “bilbo is way too much of a rude bitch to handle the dark storyline I have in mind”… but he wanted his hero to be related to bilbo still so he considered making it bilbo’s son…. but then he was like “well that means I have to explain bilbo getting a wife and for reasons I somehow just can’t put my finger on that makes absolutely NO sense at all…” so instead he just invented a tragically orphaned cousin-nephew and then accidentally made him gay too….