Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: The Fall of Gondolin. One of the three ‘Great Tales’ that formed the key heart of Tolkien’s earliest work on Middle-earth with the Book of Lost Tales, the story of the hidden Elf refuge that was destroyed in an evening of primal violence after a betrayal remained one of the most powerfully resonant for the rest of Tolkien’s creative life. Referred to in other works and in various mentions over his lifetime, it only surfaced in redacted form with the original 1977 publication of The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien’s last published work on his father’s fiction drew together the various forms of the story, including the extensively revised and expanded but frustratingly incomplete revision from the 1950s, into one volume. What might be the weight of this story in particular in terms of how to view the rest of Tolkien’s Middle-earth work that followed? How might Gondolin’s story serve as a way for Tolkien to work through his own feelings of experiencing wanton destruction via his war service? What does the experience of Tuor’s encounter with Ulmo on the shores of the sea in the revised version tell us about not only the perspective of Men viewing the Valar but also what strange undercurrents about Middle-earth’s theology might exist? And how did we end up comparing Idril Celebrindal to Avril Lavigne? (Jared’s still indignant about that one.)