Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck is a Hobbit and close friend to Frodo Baggins. Merry is an important figure in the Lord of the Rings, which — although it is gayer than Christmas — contains no evidence that Merry was sexually different, despite spending an unnatural amount of time with his diminuitive bookend Peregrin Took. Merry destroys Isengard alongside the Ents and fights bravely against Gothmog's army in Minas Tirith. Tolkien describes Merry as the most perceptive and intelligent of the Hobbits, one of Tolkien's dabbles in "damning with faint phrase" that led him to write the sequel, Lord of the Flies.