lavendertook

Pickles the Hobbit Cat celebrates the Bagginses birthday in typical cat fashion. Party on, you crazy cat!



Here are pre-quest Bagginses bonding by Atariel on DeviantArt.

Happy Bagginses Birthday to all the hobbit-hearted here! Yes, you!!!! <3

There's an interesting retrospective article on Howard Shore in the Washington Post today I thought some of you might enjoy. I did not know he started out doing music for SNL.

We are in need of magic today, so I went down to the lake at the day's last light and found the Lady of the Golden Wood had gifted my shire with a mallorn, and you can see its reflection in her mirror, an image of hope. We need that last light. As the Galadhrim of Lothlorien say, if the Sindarin here is correct, amin naa yassen he`.




That would be translated, of course, as "I'm with her" in the Common tongue.

May all our shires be gifted with golden trees of hope tomorrow. Sleep well, my flist. <3

And who is more deserving of a vacation on the anniversary of the ring's destruction than Bingo or Frodo and Sam, I ask you? They quite enjoyed their time at the Arizona-Senora Desert Museum and strolling about. ( Read more... )

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?

Also posted at http://lavendertook.dreamwidth.org/180055.html with comments

Pics still from the car on the way to Laramie:


Still in Colorado--here we're approaching the little church at Virginia Dale, CO . . .


. . . and the rocks there, which look a lot like Vedauwoo, for those in the know, and those in the not know, you will see Vedauwoo next post.

( Almost across the border . . . )

Here's my reading of an early draft of the beginning of "A Long Expected Party" with Bingo, son of Bilbo from The History of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the Shadow, because I love those early drafts, and, well, Bingo:

http://bbolger-baggins.livejournal.com/84577.html



Ahahahahaha--a safe hobbit!!!

Happy Baggins Birthday!!!

The old cake from Maryland Moot 2010 will have to suffice this year for our hobbits, since I'm barely getting time for anything this month.



More pics are here for anyone who missed it. That was a good time with my hobbit posse.<3

Addendum: I made a dollustration mathom here for the Baggins Birthday celebration at tol_eressea.

Happy Birthday to dreamflower02!!! May it be hobbity and full of your namesake. To that end . . .


Here's a beautifully tended garden with a smial growing in the middle of it, from the Hobbiton Tumbler site.



What looks like a dream flower to me--one of the passion flowers that are all abloom right now by my hobbity Greenbelt Lake.

( Read more... )

A very happy birthday to the Wee Master's poet true, my dear jan_u_wine. I hope it's been a day full of hobbity goodness that sets your muses singing. A rose for you on your day:



( Read more... )

And this rose goes to our dear addie71:

I wish you a very happy birthday of hobbitish delights and may the Wee Gardner's blessings be on all your spring plantings.
( Read more... )

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?

OK, has anybody seen frodosweetstuff? I haven't seen her around commenting for a few days, and I'm just afraid that she might have put on her ring of invisibility before seeing the below picture and may have thudded out cold somewhere when she saw it, and no one's tripped over her yet. ;-D



I had a lovely dinner with ancalime8301 this evening--I can attest that the Gandalf Gobbler sandwich at Denny's is excellent, especially with a side of spinach--the menus are very cute. But Thomas-Builds-the-Fire tells it better, of course. And yes, this was not one of the Denny's that John Metz owns, which I would not dine in. Anyway, Cali said she hadn't seen this beautiful Frodo With the Party RSVPs pic yet, so it was as good an excuse as any to post it. I'm not sure now if it's the one I got from a link to Tolkienanos from Tumbler or our dear aliensouldream. The pic posted was a red-phased and sepia-ed version of the original Rolling Stone Magazine pic, and it is a very pretty effect I like a lot, but I decided to up the blue and lower the red a bit in the pic to give it a more day light effect. Yes, ASD, it is very hard to stop playing with this pic! :-D The pic in the magazine has a much sharper focus with a candlelight tone to it.

I'm kind of psyched that we get to see an age appropriate Frodo for this movie, and he's looking as beautiful as ever. I don't mean to suggest that it's more correct than the fanon that supposes that hobbits at the 33 coming of age point are like a human 18 due to slower maturation, a fanon mostly developed to make sense of Frodolijah looking so young, I think. But that fanon never quite satisfies for me that his younger hobbit companions look older than he is.

So here's how my head fanon of the films is working now: Frodo looks age appropriate in The Hobbit because the tale is from Bilbo's point of view, and Bilbo sees Frodo as he is--a hobbit in his thirties when Bilbo is eleventy-one.

However, the LotR is from Frodo's point of view, and thus he has a younger self-image of himself, as I think most of us do. So with Frodo's telling of the tale, we see him as he sees himself: a younger hobbit than even his ring-slowed age would make him later. So now it all makes sense for me and I won't have any cognitive dissonance at seeing an older Frodo for the earlier parts of the tales. And I'm so psyched to see a Frodo (and Bingo) who looks so much closer to my textual head fanon image of the character. Such are the happy rationalizations of this Frodocentric, and still Bingocentric, fan. (-;

And I promised Cali more links of what's been fun to view the last couple of weeks:

The 8 minute fan compilation of all the previews
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/21/the-hobbit-fan-trailer_n_2170938.html

The Piano Guys LotR Cover of pretty visuals with gorgeous piano/cello duo
http://youtu.be/FZNqs0YgWkM

The Silly Air New Zealand advertisement video with great-grandson Royd Tolkien in hobbit feet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc

Ian McKellan's fanfic of a Bilbo/Gandalf backstory, that I bet would delight the Cucumber-Free-Cookie-batch fans a lot (-;
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/7985801/Sir-Ian-on-Gandalfs-return

PJs Production Video #9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vqyzHwnEiY

And another pic from RSM I really like


Enjoy!

And one more thing: does Shore's Misty Mountains Cold theme remind anyone else of Jupiter from Holst's "The Planets"? I find you can hum (OK, as in, "I have hummed") the tune and gone right into humming Holst's with one smooth transition. There ya go. (-:

3 more weeks! :-D

If you are planning to come to this December moot, considering it still, or are just nosey about the doings of your hobbit posse, like any good hobbit, and need to live vicariously, please join the Maryland Mootses community on LJ:

http://mdmoot.livejournal.com/

In which I may have rescued Verid a second time . . .

This is a true story, and I don't blame you if you don't believe it, because I hardly believe it, but it's what happened and I do have a witness. And to whoever came up with this plot obstacle to put me up against, a big SCREW YOU, because it is terribly, terribly contrived. Stop stretching credibility just to torture me, ' kay?

So on Sunday, A., a relative I've never gotten to spend one-on-one time with before, came to visit me and was such delightful company, my throat was sore all yesterday from chatting so much. I took her out to Ithilien Greenbelt Lake in the afternoon to walk around it, and hoped maybe we'd chance to see Verid or PR Officer along the way.

As we were walking the path, we approached a family walking ahead of us, a woman and man and 3 or 4 small children. I didn't completely register it at the time, but they were all carrying butterfly nets. No, really! And a little boy in the middle of the path was carrying one of those expensive mesh butterfly cages half the size of my dollar store hamper that I mentioned in the last post. As we got closer, and I strained to see, much to my horror, there was a monarch butterfly inside. I walked much faster to catch up to them and could see it was indeed a female monarch AND IT COULD VERY WELL BE VERID! Oh boy.

( In Henneth Annun on Greenbelt Lake continues below . . .  )

( Read more... )

We will be having a Maryland Moot this year in Westminster. Hopefully, we'll be able to get the Best Western again to hang out in. I called them, and they are about halfway full on both weekends, so we'll want to call reservations in the next couple of weeks for either weekend. But there are other places if it fills, so no worries. We have to choose between the 2 weekends now, and I'm going to announce a definite date before the middle of next week, so there's more than a month for people to make travel arrangements, no matter which we choose. I'm tentatively saying Friday through Sunday, and of course, people can hang out longer, but we can discuss the adjustment of days when we pick a weekend.

So the choices:

November 9, 10, 11. Veterans Day is Sunday, November 11th, so there might be flexibility on whether Friday or Monday is a work holiday for some people. The leaves should still be pretty around here. It's usually pretty temperate this time of year here. Just cross fingers for no possible hurricane.

or

December 14, 15, 16. The Hobbit opens in theaters that Friday. I guess that means the first midnight showing is Thursday night/Friday morning? so some people might want to arrive Thursday if you're a midnight showing goer. I suspect we might want to attend multiple showings that weekend, so everyone's best times, and 3D vs 2D needs and preferences can be accommodated. This is all stuff that we will need to discuss if we choose to meet up for this weekend. We rarely have snow or ice that early, so that's not a worry, and the weather can be anywhere from temperate to cold, or a hurricane. We don't usually have bitter winter weather here until January.

So, please pick one box for your answer. You have as many choices as the number of dwarves and hobbits together who went on the quest to Erebor to choose from. Discussion, suggestions, explanations, wishes, hopes, squee, and nitpicks are most welcome in the comments. (-:


[Poll #1869316]


Let's get this choice made so we can haz mootses soon!

PS: The spell-checker for "everyone's" gives the strangest suggestions! Efren's, Efrain's, Aryan's, overruns, Aryans, Ivorians. OK then.

PSS: Evidently, Smeagol is administering this poll. So if you answer incorrectly, you might be eaten. Responses hobbitses!!!

EDIT: I guess the DW poll, doesn't translate onto LJ. I will inset an LJ formatted poll as soon as I can. WATCH THIS SPACE. EDIT ONE MILLION: Done.

So here's the breakdown thus far.

We've got 12 people saying they are interested.

Of that 12:

5: Any weekend will work:
mews1945
lovethosehobbit
obeliamedusa, might not be able to make October
lbilover, though would prefer November
lavendertook

4: Conditions:
browngirl can probably make December, but probably not the others.
aliensouldream might be able to make December if it is close enough to NYC premiere in time>
romeny can do November.
finnegans_way can do December movie, but may not be up to moot further due to hobbitling.

3: Definite Maybes on all 3 weekends:
claudia603
ancalime8301
grey_wonderer

I'm excited! It looks like the best thing right now is to drop the October weekend possibility and decide between November 9-11 Veterans Day weekend and December 14-16 Hobbit Movie release. And it looks like more of us are leaning toward December, but let's discuss some more and see if anyone else wants to join in. What say you?

It's the end of Tolkien Reading Day and I haven't given links for my last 3 reading excerpts for the read_lotr_aloud project in this journal, so I'm linking them here now. Bingo has added his appropriate face icons to the posts. The first two posts contain links to the whole chapter with everyone's readings. The last one I just recorded today, and not all readings are in yet, so there is no group link for the whole chapter. However, I will be adding that link after our wonderful organizer lbilover puts the post together next week, so please check back then if you're giving them a listen.

Farewell to Lothlorien

The Great River

The Breaking of the Fellowship

One day soon I'm going to sit down and do a listen to the whole of FotR that our group has produced and I'll be sure to leave comments then.

I've been down with a cold the past week--sore spotty throat, congestion, and tiredness, though I think it was incubating for at least a week beforehand. Then my immune system decided to launch a lightning strike on the micro-aggressors and lifted my temperature almost 5 degrees F--from 97.8 to 102.2--in a little more than the space of a half hour early last evening--thanks guys for the fun ride!
( Ride to ruin, and the world's ending, and a red, runny nose . . . )

Happy Froday!

OK now, Maryland Area Hobbit Posse,

I wanna make sure I get my ticket for the

FotR EE on Tuesday, June 14th at 7 pm

by this Monday. I think L. is going to join me. The ticket prices seem to have been standardized at all the theaters at $12.50 per show including the Fandango charge. Who is with me? It's showing in a number of theaters in the area. My suggestion is the Snowden Square Theater in Columbia, MD because Columbia is central for DC and Baltimore peeps, and that theater is lots easier to park at and get close to the theater than the one at Columbia Mall that is also showing the EE's. If you have a preference for another theater in the area please say so now.

Who else also wants to get their tickets for

TTT EE Tuesday 21st at 7 pm
RotK EE Tuesday 28th at 7 pm

Let's see if we can get that all settled in this thread.

Also it's mountain laurel blooming time:



This is an early blooming one last week here at Greenbelt Lake. More are blooming this year around the lake than I've seen before. But the really spectacular place to see mountain laurels bloom is down at Calvert Cliffs State Park in southern MD, which is just covered in them. They should be just about peaking now, and I'm planning to drive down there sometime this coming week between tomorrow and Memorial Day. Is anyone interested in coming with me (and sharing in gas expenses if you can), and we could decide on which day would be good? Cali and I went on this weekend last year and it was gorgeous, and it should be even prettier this year. What say you?

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.