lavendertook

My fandom friend morgan_dhu is short of funds for transport so she can get needed surgery. You can find her post here on LJ or on DW to learn more about her situation and go to her go fund me site here. <3

Also posted at http://lavendertook.dreamwidth.org/198530.html with comments

I have not gotten a chance to post pics from AwesomeCon in DC last spring, so in honor of your birthday, ink_gypsy, here is the best pic I took of Sean Astin, from his panel with John Rhys-Davies about LotR--sorry Elijah wasn't there:



A very happy birthday to you!

So is anyone up for a Maryland Moot next year? Our last was in Dec of 2012 for the first Hobbit film.

The end of April, beginning of May is often beautiful here, but not so good for those of the hobbit posse on academic calendars.

So I was thinking, how about the first weekend in June (6/3-6/6)? Is everyone's semester done then?

The weather is often still temperate here the beginning of June and roses are out, and it's usually quite lovely--though sometimes it can be stinky hot. This would be the week after the Memorial Day weekend. I figured air fares and airport congestion would be worse on Memorial Day weekend, but would be just as happy to have it then, if it were better for people, but I suspect that would be cutting it close for those finishing out semesters.

Or would you not be available until autumn?

What say you? Who is up for it?

Continued from Part 1 here on DW and here on LJ.

( SPOILERS and SPECULATIONS Go Ever On and On . . .  )

WHO AM I? 24601 . . .

To sum up about movie Bilbo, I have to say this Bilbo is quite different from Tolkien's Bilbo. He's not just more competent, but much more self-possessed from the beginning. Tolkien's Bilbo fumes inwardly, but is polite to a fault when the dwarves take over his house, and he shrieks like a tea kettle and squeaks a lot. Movie Bilbo doesn't hide how cranky he feels and has no problem saying no, even if his objections are as ignored as book Bilbo's inner fuming. He is sardonic with Gandalf ("Is he a great wizard, or more like you?") and knows how to speak with strangers, as he plays for time with the trolls.

In fact, he's not book Bilbo at all. He's book Frodo! It's Frodo who starts out with this level of competency, aaaaand crankiness. Tolkien's Frodo would not drop his sword and fall on his bum when beset by ringwraiths, but Tolkien's Bilbo, before he reached the middle of Mirkwood, might have. And don't tell me it's because Elijah Wood couldn't project this level of competence and sardonic quippiness, because he can, and does so in his initial talk with Gandalf and in the extended Green Dragon scene with the Gaffer.

Movie Frodo never does get to display the level of competence and wisdom that book Frodo shows, and that book Bilbo develops in the latter part of his arc, and I'm not just talking about Frodo's inner struggle, which film does have some unique ways to portray that PJ did not take advantage of. So Boyens, Walsh, and PJ seem to have reversed these two characters and plopped them in each other's stories. Crackfic central! It makes me wonder if they're just bigger Bilbo fans than Frodo fans, since they took away much of Frodo's strength of character and gave it to Bilbo. Or if they loved beginning Bilbo's fish-out-of water-ness so much they wanted Frodo to have it when he went on the road. And with this new trilogy, they don't want Bilbo to seem too much like their Frodo, so they are dispensing with his fear, vulnerability, and difficulty with the road.

Since they're making Bilbo competent from the outset, maybe they feel that must naturally culminate in battle prowess, because they equate being competent with being a macho warrior--FAIL. I do not want Bilbo to fight in the Battle of Five Armies, but I'm suspecting he will. He will probably have to fight spiders that are bigger and scarier than Shelob by the Law of The Audience Expects More and We Must Deliver, the poor fellow, but we'll see how that goes. Whether he is really book Bilbo or Frodo, I do love Martin Freeman's Bilbo thus far.


LEGENDARIUM AND SCOPE

I will continue to ponder all these issues into the next movie as I watch where they take this hobbit, whoever he is, and his companions. I do love the bigger scope of this story made by the incorporation of the LotR Appendices. I am eager to see what changes they make for the internal logic of their adaptation and how big and operatic it makes it, along with what they try to preserve of Tolkien's textual work and what parts of the Legendarium they can bring in without copyright infringement and Tolkien Estate battles.

Speaking of the Tolkien Estate, I love how Boyen's, Walsh's, and PJ's larger scope gives greater sympathy to the "jealous love" of the creator, that is a major theme in The Silmarillion in a predominantly cautionary vein. In this movie, that jealous love of creation among the Dwarves is also about communal production and cultural identity formation, what makes a people with family and cultural traditions, not just a clinging to objects for greed's sake. Tolkien's The Hobbit brings to this issues of rightfully contested cultural ownership and shared territory that the last movie installment should explore. PJ's team have the potential here for revealing a greater emotional and ethical complexity than Tolkien elaborated in his Legendarium, in what is, in essence, Feanor's quest in the Dwarves quest for Erebor. I hope they do more with this.

What do you think?

It's not just Readercon and it's not only sexual harassment and the sexism that creates the environment for it. It's not just men in sf&f/nerd/geek spaces and the casual acceptance of sexual harassment that has made those spaces uncomfortable for me, and makes staying at home with the cats and talking with my friends online the better social option. Earlier this summer, I went to a local meet up for geek women, and "geek" here does seem to mean "fandom". It was a nice enough group, the organizer was fun, and I wanted to go again.

Then a couple of weeks ago, the organizer, who appears to be white (as did all the group at the meetup I attended, though there are a few women of color on the meetup list who weren't in attendance) made a racist and ableist comment meant to be a joke on the group mailing list/message board. And I've been debating whether to say something, which my hunch says will not be well received, or if I should just save the energy and walk away from the group, which would be the easier thing to do. I already skipped the last meet up.

I decided to give sociability and communicating about my discomfort with the racist/ableist comment a go, though I did focus more on the racist part of it. Below is the email I sent the organizer yesterday afternoon. I took a note from Jay Smooth and decided to leave out the "r'" word. If you think there's a gentler way I could have gotten my point across, and want to share to help me in future situations, please let me know. I've been in this position many times in the past in plenty of places and will be in it again many times in the future. And I don't always have the choice to stay home with the cats when it's not an optional social space like fandom, but instead a place of employment, for instance. So here's what I sent her, sans greeting, quote of the comment, and closure:
( My email, kvetching about white sf/f fan spaces, and the reply that then came below . . . )

When I came onto LJ in 2002, I was interested in reading Frodo/Sam fic, but I found just as vibrant a community for writing about Frodo/Sam/Rosie as a happy triad as there was for Frodo/Sam as a happy couple, and I liked what F/S/R people were doing as well. Now there doesn't seem to be any F/S/R being written anymore, so I figured I'd best do something about that, and since I write about Frodo's discarded early draft incarnation, Bingo, I wrote a Bingo/Sam/Rosie fic for a fic universe I think a lot about for the week 5 challenge at fffc community on LJ.

Author: lavendertook
Title: The Moment Lately Past
Prompt: Parting (and reunion)
Characters/Pairings/Triad: Bingo/Sam/Rosie
Rating: PG
Word Count: 333, Triple Hobble
A/N: All this talk of Rosie, it's time I wrote a take on their relationship I've been playing with. This is part of an extra-canonical universe that jumps ahead several years from when I have usually been writing about Bingo (The Commuterverse.) It's set in S.R. 1448, 27 years after Bingo first sailed West, and 5 years after Sam first sailed, 40 years before the Red Book's telling, give or take a few months.

You can find it here.