Elves Are Stupidly Fabulous

If you haven't seen this yet, you need to.

 

 

Ahahahaha. Thorin is so unimpressed. Thranduil is being all fabulous and Elrond is being... I don't know... Dracula or something with his cape? Ahahahaha. Gotta love this cast, every one of 'em.

 

Uhh. The gifs got messed up again. Grr. Ah, well, it can't be fixed now.

 

In Pace Christi,

 

Elyse

Fun With Dwarves

The comments:

| Martin Freeman at dwarf boot camp. He appears to be leading the workout. It appears Jed Brophy has no idea what he is doing. It appears Adam Brown isn't really trying at all. It appears they are all having the time of their lives.

|| look at how focused Richard is

In other news, Martin has a hard time getting on his pony:

And Aidan is laughing at him. XD

Also, Fili decides that he needs to keep an eye on his brother and so makes him hold hands while crossing the green-screen street:

There is already fanart of this, I assure you. I've seen it. It is adorable.

Oh, and bonus food fights in Rivendell! Lindir is not taking this well.

 

 

Let's zoom in on Lindir's face there...

 

 

Lindir's face is just the best thing ever.

 

 

 

 

As a bonus, here is something somebody noticed during the extended Goblin King scene:

 

| GUYS

 

| IS THAT

 

 

 





| Thorin being a precious uncle and comforting Kili?

 

 

 

 

| Yes it is!

 

Also note: look, Fili's finally there in the background! Although it really doesn't look much like Dean... Darn it, Dean! Why isn't there more of your Fili in AUJ?

 

I expect this situation to be rectified in DoS. I do. Work on it.

 

In Pace Christi,

 

Elyse

 

Boromir Speaks the Truth!

This has been scientifically proven to be impossible. Of course, it's cheese. Who can resist? Not even when the Auditors of Reality describe it as 'rotted bovine lactation' in Discworld does its appeal abate.

Praise cheese!

Furthermore:

In Boromir's world, nothing is simply done. Cue the song of, "It simply isn't done, it simply isn't doooone, it simply isn't done," from Cinderella 2.

I now must take one of my Gandalf minifigures and place it in the hallway. My main concern, however, is that someone will not notice him and step on him. My concern in such an occurrence, however incongruous, is for the harm that might befall LEGO Gandalf and not for the harm that might befall said careless person's foot, although I know firsthand how painful stepping on a small hard plastic object can be.

Fortunately, I have several LEGO Gandalfs.

Oh, yes. Most certainly, precious. I am so very happy when someone gets the joke I made. The other day in lab we were watching our compounds boil for an hour and a half. To alleviate the boredom, I randomly stated, "My bubbles." So happy to have that quote from Finding Nemo recognized and appreciated!

It's also good to have occasions in which to make fandom references! XD

Are they ever! XD Table manners and Elves are so last year. Wait... is that Ori holding a knife? Or is that Kili? Scary circumstance in either case. The silly boys... the precious noodles have obviously never been away from home before. Sometimes you think they still need their mother to look after them...

Cannot wait for the epic food fight and Bofur's song and dance in Rivendell!

If only we had more used bookstores around here. *sigh* The subject reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quote: "Used bookstores are just genteel black holes that know how to read." There's also the theory of L-space, but I shall not expound on that here. XD It's for your own sanity.

Beautiful illustration by Ted Nasmith. I don't always love the guy's Tolkien artwork, but this one is simply lovely. I also love the quote, spoken by Elrond at the Grey Havens in ROTK.

Speaking of which...

Where I found this picture, someone had commented: People hate Elrond?! My comment is along the lines of: How can you possibly hate Elrond? He's amazing, and for many reasons. Let's take a look.

If all you value about characters is their ability to kick butt, Elrond is no slouch in this department. Let's just peek at his genealogy, shall we? His mother's father's mother was a demigoddess (half-Maia, if you prefer.) His father is Earendil. Earendil killed SHELOB'S MOTHER, also known as Ungoliant, the monstrous spider Radagast refers to in TH:AUJ ("It's the spiders, Gandalf." "Spiders?" "Some kind of spawn of Ungoliant, or I am no wizard."). Earendil also killed the biggest dragon to ever live, Ancalagon the Black. And THEN Earendil became the Morning Star. And Earendil's family on both his father's and his mother's side is composed of pure awesomeness.

You see Gandalf's sword? That belonged to Elrond's great-grandfather, Turgon, King of Gondolin.

Now, if your beef with Elrond is the fact that he's 'mean' to Aragorn and Arwen, you obviously haven't read The Silmarillion. When Beren, a mortal man, wishes to marry Luthien, an Elven-Maia princess (yes, the demigoddess ancestress referred to earlier), her father, King Thingol, demanded that Beren steal a Silmaril as the bride-price. For a little context: the three Silmarils had been stolen by Morgoth, a.k.a., the Satan of Middle-earth, and he continually wore them on his crown so that no one would ever be able to recover them. Thingol basically signed Beren's death warrant in the most painful, humiliating way with that. (Of course, Beren, Luthien, and their talking dog go on to win a Silmaril and beat up Sauron himself, but whatever.)

Elrond, on the other hand, has been fostering the young chieftains of the Dunedain for generations. He treats Aragorn like a son; in fact, at one point in the LOTR Appendices, long before Aragorn and Arwen actually marry, he does call Aragorn 'my son'. When he learns Aragorn wishes to marry Arwen, all he basically says is that, "Go and prove that you are worthy enough to marry her by becoming King of Gondor and Arnor." Aragorn was already (mostly) the legal heir to both positions (it's a long story) and wanted to do this anyway. It wasn't a death sentence, just more of, "I want to make sure my daughter is taken care of properly when I leave."

I'm not sure why else people would have a problem with Elrond. Maybe they don't like his eyebrows. I dunno. Apparently, ugly people must be evil and his eyebrows give him a sinister appearance. To counteract that, I submit Elrond in armor.

Exhibit I:

Exhibit II:

 

I mean, really...

ELROND FOR THE WIN!!!

J. R. R. Tolkien is one of the least-appreciated Catholic philosophers, I sometimes think. His Catholicism is very much underappreciated. It needs to be spread and appreciated. Such greatness could have only come from the wealth of truth and beauty that is our Catholic faith.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

I Made Some Stuff Again

I recognize, of course, that they are not memes, as they have not become memetic. It has lately come to my attention that such screencaps with captions may, in fact, be known as macros. I am not certain on this, so please do not quote me.

However, I have been playing around with Paint and some screencaps (The Lord of the Rings Image Library is a wonderful, wonderful website) and have devised the following:

That picture just screamed for that caption. In fact, I think I found it with the caption of something like: "I dunno. You're the wise Elf, you tell me." So it was only natural I label it.

I also played around with a new font, in case you didn't notice. I felt something more informal would be appropriate, and so came up with Kristen something or other. I've been using Lucinda Calligraphy and Lucinda Bright mostly until now.

I'm not happy with this one. I still don't know how to place the words in a way that I like, while retaining the emphases upon 'all', 'luck', and 'world'. I'm happy with the placement and italics of I really do, but it's the first sentence that gets me. Hmm. I don't like straight lines of text, but I can't curve them or slant them in Paint.

Sounds like I need a better picture manipulating program...

I love Bofur so much, y'all. I have the same fool's hope, the same faith in everything turning out eventually for the best. If only I had his willingness to befriend people, as well. Sadly, I'm not used to being around people in a positive way. Not that I have many negative encounters with people, though. They're mostly just neutral. You sit next to them in class, pass them on the sidewalk. It's not much.

And now I'm describing people like subatomic particles. Gah. *headbang*

I need a new macro, one that says, "THIS IS WHY I LIKE SCIENCE MORE THAN PEOPLE."

It would be very applicable to my life at a great many points.

Maybe I just don't know the right people...

This one will be very handy for ordering people around. XD

This is quoted very often around our house.

Legolas's face here was also just screaming for thisi caption. So I obliged. XD

Now, this Bofur one I am happy with.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

Awesome Lines That Weren't In the Movie

Poor Gimli. He gets quoted all the time and never gets referenced. This awesome gifset corrects that error (and also has Elrond being wonderfully insightful - there was a reason I loved him before the LOTR movies made me dislike him, and also before the Official Fanfiction University of Middle-earth and AUJ made me like him again):

I have an AUJ calendar hanging in my bedroom at the moment, and the picture for July is Elrond in armor. So much awesome. It was still kind of a wrench flipping to July, though, as June was BOFUR SMASH and how on earth do you pick between Bofur and Elrond???

To wit:

BOFUR SMASH!

Elrond in armor

I mean, how do you even remotely go about picking??

Nerd problems. *sigh*

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

...And So I'm Putting Up Hobbit Pics To Cheer Myself Up

Enjoy!

Too bad it's so small. You really should click on it to get the full benefit. Heehee. In other words, this is 1/2 of the Hobbit cast acting completely normal... In a clockwise direction, beginning with the bald guy at the top left: Graham McTavish (Dwalin - I actually almost typed Dwalin McTavish, can you believe it?), Jed Brophy (Nori), Stephen Hunter (Bombur), John Callen (Oin), Dean O'Gorman in yet another of his flannel shirts (Fili), Adam Brown being adORIble, and Mark Hadlow (Dori), with Sylvester McCoy (Radagast) in the middle.

These guys... can't handle 'em. Just can't.

From left to right: Jed Brophy, Stephen Hunter, Dean O'Gorman, Graham McTavish, and Adam Brown.

Speaking of Stephen Hunter (who wants to see more of Bombur in the next movies? I do!), he often finishes his tweets with "Team Bombur". Awww. Bombur seriously needs more appreciation, guys. He cooks wonderfully, he is the only married Dwarf other than Gloin (and apparently has a passle of kids), and he can lay into goblins like nobody's business.

At HobbitCon, Stephen Hunter talked about how Dean and Aidan would invade his trailer to play FIFA on his game system. LOL. Typical boys.

Chillin' Like a Bombur

The best (and most accurate) captions I saw for this pic on Tumblr?

Dori: *resigned to this fate*
Nori: *drunk - happily drunk*
Ori: Why, brothers, whyyyyyyyy?

I still giggle shamelessly when I see this picture, because I think of the captions every time! *gigglesnort*

 

At the end of HobbitCon they sang "Misty Mountains" for all the fans... *sniff* Really wish I could have been there...

 

 



 

If you can't read it, it says, "If there's a key, there must be a door. - And if there's no key let's hope there is a mailbox."

 

XD To explain... (according to someone on Tumblr):

 

So basically what happened was: It was like 5 in the morning and he forgot his keys and thought that he could open the door from the inside out through the letterbox (it was one of those letterboxes in which you can put both milk and letters). When he realized he couldn’t reach the door handle he wanted to push himself back out, but there was nothing to push against. He yelled for his flatmate, an older Irish woman who was drunk all the time, who came downstairs and walked past him to open the door. And when he told her he got stuck she said, “Maybe I’ll pull you out”, but she couldn’t because she was “a woman, older and, you know, drunk” so she sat down in a chair next to him and suggested to call the fire brigade. So the fire brigade turned up and the people in the apartment thought, “Oh, no, there’s a fire!” and they came downstairs and all they could see were his feet sticking out, so people thought a body had been stuck into the letterbox. The fire brigade couldn’t pull him out, so they had to cut a hole in the wall to get him out. He wasn’t injured, “But you know, my dignity was gone.”

Bahahahahaha... The fandom will never let him forget the mailbox incident now... Ahahaha....

 

Some other fun stuff from HobbitCon:

 

Tidbits from Sylvester McCoy:

 

Fan: So is Sebastian okay now?

Sylvester: Bloody upstaging little animal.

--

Fan: So what would you do if you were given a Ring of Power?
Sylvester: Someone actually did give me a ring once. But not my agent. He thinks I'm dead.

--

Sylvester: And then a twelve-year-old stole my TARDIS.

--

Mark Ferguson: And we have a question on the balcony.

Sylvester: Jump!

Random tidbits:

 

- Adam Brown did dance moves from "All the Single Ladies" music video.

- Graham bowed to the audience and said, "I will remain at your service," at the end of HobbitCon.

- Jed and Adam acted out a scene from Ori's childhood (Nori trying to teach Ori what to do if he encountered a warg) when Mark crashed their panel and started reprimanding them about how there were going to get hurt.

- WETA guy: "Azog is the Aidan Turner of the orcs."

- Jed said THERE WILL BE AUDIO COMMENTARY ON THE EXTENDED EDITIONS!!! HALLELUJAH!

- Graham apparently had problems with his pony (it's white and fluffy... and it's named Harley. Like the motorcycle). He has a new movie coming out sometime; it's a Western. Adam and Jed decided to heckle him and asked, "But if it's a Western, how do you deal with the horses?" He said: "I shot them."

- Mark: “You know, in the film, Ori tries to get away from Dori and starts to listen to Nori more and more. *audience laughs* And you know what!? It’s beginning to happen in real life as well!” Cue Jed and Adam running out from backstage.

- Question to Dean at Hobbitcon panel: How did Fili and Kili really lose the ponies?

    Dean: …Hobbiton weed. I don’t want to say who gave it to us but he’s tall and has a pointy hat. But nice try. It was not what you were thinking.

- When the cast played a game where they had to name Tolkien characters who died (easy, if you've read The Silmarillion; practically only Cirdan, Elrond, and Galadriel survive) (this also demonstrated that Dean fails forever at Tolkien trivia), Jed said, "Gil-galad!" right off the bat. The moderator, Mark Ferguson, played Gil-galad.

 

Hmm. You really don't see Gil-galad much in the Fellowship - a bit more in the EE, sure, but he's never named and has no lines.

 

Time to post pictures and explain who he is!

 

 

That's him on the right. His name means 'starlight'. He was the High King of the Noldorin Elves at the time of the last alliance, and after he died... there was no one left to take his place. He was (in The Silmarillion; it may have been mixed up with Tolkien's revisions) originally called Ereinion, and was the son of Fingon, son of Fingolfin, son of Finwe. (Fingolfin was awesome, by the way... He fought Sauron's boss and managed to wound him so badly he was lame ever after. Oh, Fingolfin died, of course, but he went out awesomely...)

 

Gil-galad's uncle, Turgon, was the King of the City of Gondolin. The sword Gandalf has - Glamdring? Yeah, it belonged to Turgon. Fans speculate that Orcrist, which Thorin uses, and Sting, which Bilbo has picked up, were originally a set that belonged to Ecthelion of the Fountain, one of Turgon's Elf-lords, who gave his life to kill a Balrog. Yeah. Elves of the First Age... not to be trifled with!

 

If you look closely, you can see Gil-galad earlier in the prologue, when the three Elven rings are shown. Galadriel is the focus of the shot, of course, but the silver-haired guy in the back is Cirdan the Shipwright, who was given Narya, the Ring of Fire (which he passed on to Gandalf), and the dark-haired guy is Gil-galad. Gil-galad was given Vilya, the Ring of Air, and luckily he gave it to Elrond, who was his herald at the battle in Mordor, for safe keeping before he died.

 

Gil-galad also went out in a really unpleasant way. I had expected that it would show his death in the FOTR EE, but no such luck. In the book all it says, other than that he died, is a throwaway comment by Isildur as he's describing the Ring and how its markings fade when the Ring is cool: "Maybe it misseth the heat of Sauron's hand, and so was Gil-galad destroyed."

 

I cannot help but imagine that Sauron grabbed Gil-galad by the throat, lifted him up, and literally set him on fire so that he burned to death. Yeah. I have a pleasant imagination. I guess they didn't want to put that in the movie.

 

Gil-galad must have dropped his spear, Aiglos ('icicle'), since Elrond was able to take it home with him. I think it was kept with the broken Narsil (has anyone spotted it in that scene in FOTR?), which would be a nice symbolism of the way their owners were friends in life.

 

Sam recites in The Fellowship of the Ring the beginning of a poem about Gil-galad:

 

Gil-galad was an Elven King,

Of him the harpers sadly sing;

His realm was the last that was fair and free

Between the Mountains and the Sea.

 

His sword was long, his lance was keen,

His shining helm afar was seen;

The countless stars of heaven's field

Were mirrored in his silver shield.

 

But long ago he rode away

And where he dwells none can say;

For into darkness fell his star,

In Mordor where the shadows are.

 

Me again, quoting Tolkien poetry from memory. Please excuse any errors.

 

Here's another picture of Gil-galad.

 

 

Probably facing Sauron... There's pictures of Gil-galad of footage that clearly never made it into the movie; can't this stuff be released? Geeks want to know!!!

 

Gah.

 

Maybe I should go hunt up more pictures...

 

In Pace Christi,

 

Elyse