The Pity of Bilbo

Tolkien, your Catholicism is showing.

I always find it so incredibly moving that it's not killing an army of aliens or slaughtering oliphaunts that saves Middle-earth. What saves Middle-earth is Bilbo choosing not to kill Gollum, not striking without need, and then later Frodo keeping Gollum alive despite his many opportunities (handing him over to Faramir, for instance).

They saved a life. Not just any life, either - no. They saved the life of someone who had murdered, lied, stolen. They saved the life of someone who intended to kill them and eat them. They saved the life of someone who had (not entirely willingly) alerted Sauron to their presence. They saved the life of someone who could have ratted them out to the orcs, drowned them in the Dead Marshes, and revealed them at the Black Gates. They saved the life of someone who tried to feed them to a giant demigoddess spider.

And yet Bilbo did not kill Gollum. Frodo did not kill Gollum. On the slopes of Mount Doom, even Sam did not kill Gollum.

They saved Middle-earth.

How's that for Catholic?

That's part of the reason why I think The Avengers is so good - they defeat the Chitauri because Tony Stark is willing to sacrifice his life to stop the aliens. It's that sacrifice play that does the job.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

I'm Back To LOTR Funnies

As a matter of fact, I know who Tom Bombadil and his wife, Goldberry, are. People who have only seen the movies are likely to go, "What the blank?!" when they start the books and get to the three chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring that Tom Bombadil is in.

"But this isn't in the movie!" they'll wail.

Now, intense fan debate rages over who and what, precisely, Tom Bombadil is. My best guess is that he is some sort of Maia, the spirit of the vanishing English countryside, as J. R. R. Tolkien himself put it. (An attractive fan theory also holds that he is Aule himself, the creator of the Dwarves. However, upon further consideration, that is unlikely.)

I used to intensely dislike Tom Bombadil and was glad that the movies kept him out. Now, however, my temper has cooled. I won't say that Tom Bombadil is a favorite character, but I don't mind him. I still see why he wasn't in the movie, but I regret that the "Fog on the Barrow-Downs" chapter didn't make its way into the movie. It explains so much, like, for example, how Merry's sword was able to defeat the Witch-king.

Um, that's Dwarves, thank you very much. The capitalized D is optional, as the Professor was never very consistent himself on whether or not 'Elf' and 'Dwarf' and even 'Hobbit' should be capitalized. I prefer to capitalize them myself, but my fingers may occasionally slip.

I always, however, spell the plurals with a 'v'. It is ELVES and DWARVES, not elfs and dwarfs. The 'f' makes one think of tiny stupid fairy tale characters, and the races belonging to the Professor's Middle-earth deserve more dignity than that.

I am totally doing this the next time I find myself in the middle of an argument. I doubt, somehow, that I shall end up doing this in class.

Although there is a possibility...

One of my favorite lines from the book (I have very many favorite lines, too many to ever list in one post), and Meriadoc Brandybuck is my favorite hobbit from LOTR.

Reasons?

He's the smart one. In the book, he is the only other hobbit than Frodo who was sneaky enough to catch Bilbo using his Ring and to steal a glimpse of his book. Realizing that Frodo is planning to leave the Shire, he forms a conspiracy to plan ahead and go with him, along with Pippin and Sam.

In Rivendell he looked at maps and things, while Frodo was off talking to Bilbo and Pippin was fooling around. After they escape from the Uruk-hai, he is able to confidently navigate them to and through Fangorn Forest.

He gladly swears allegiance to Theoden King (later he speaks of Theoden as a father to him) and wants to ride off to war - in fact, at one point he wishes that he were a tall Rider like Eomer and could blow a horn and go riding to the rescue. Despite the terror of the Witch-king, he rallied himself and stabbed him in the knee with his Barrow-blade, allowing Eowyn to finish him off. Despite killing the Lord of the Nazgul, he didn't pride himself on that accomplishment, only saying, "It's not always a bad thing, being overlooked."

Meriadoc Brandybuck for the win.

Note to self: Stay away from Firefoot.

The resemblance is undeniable.

'SR' stands for Shire Reckoning, one of the calendar systems the Professor devised for Middle-earth. He was thorough, that great and wonderful man. He devised tons of languages, calendar systems, alphabets, maps, and more for his fantasy world. Is it any wonder that, 75 years later (precisely! The Hobbit came out on September 21, 1937), this fandom is stronger than ever? There is so much depth to Middle-earth that we shall never grow tired of it.

And, yes... that last line in Appendix B of The Lord of the Rings never fails to make me tear up: "And at last was come to an end in Middle-earth of the Fellowship of the Ring."

Hahahahaha.

There is a reason I am not on Facebook.

 

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

It was.

(Now, you may try to argue that there is a love triangle between Aragorn, Arwen, and Eowyn. There is not. Eowyn only crushes on Aragorn. It is not reciprocated. There was never any danger, at least in the book, of Aragorn defaulting on his promise to Arwen. Frankly, it got annoying to watch Eowyn keep going after Aragorn even AFTER she knows he has an Elvish girlfriend. I mean, seriously.)

Oh, look: I found pic I was thinking of as I typed that:

Where can I buy these?

You may all go and have nightmares for the rest of your life. *cackles insanely*

Apparently, Sauron rules AT&T. Given our experience with it, this may indeed be accurate.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

Some Seriously Funny Videos

I don't even know how I found these - wait, I think my sister actually found them first. Well, I don't even know how she found them. But they are seriously funny. You MUST watch them. They are stop-motion fanmade videos of LEGO minifigurines - what more can you ask for?

In this video, LEGO Voldemort goes shopping for the Elder Wand at Ollivander's. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? (Ironically, he is also the only LEGO figurine to have a nose... lol.)

So, of course after watching this one we had to look up the rest of the videos on this channel - Brotherhood Workshop - and we found some more ones that are equally funny. Observe:

The guys who do these videos are amazing. You should really check out the rest of their stuff.

Have a great day! :)

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

So, I'm Back

I really meant to post before now but our Internet was out. Obviously, I could not post. Now it is back, so I can post.

Obviously, I am back to posting random, mostly Tolkien-related stuff. Which I have found on Pinterest. No, I have not actually joined that site. That is the last thing I need to do. Because then I would feel compelled to both blog and repin everything, and I would waste even more time than I do now.

How I wasted time today: I became fed up with everything I have heard about Supernatural and decided to research it on TVTropes.

Result: I have decided it is not my cup of tea. It also figures that the one character I would end up liking is Sam, destined vessel of Lucifer. *headbang* Apologies if I just spoiled you. But, GAH, every character I like seems to die or go evil. It just isn't fair. *sobs pathetically*

Another reason not to join that fandom: my brain keeps insisting Dean should be the one with the long hair. I'm not sure why.

I should probably move on to the pictures before this post gets any weirder...

PICTURES!!! Oooh, shiny! PICTURES!!!

Important doors of Middle-earth.

So, so, so very true. The Lord of the Rings is one of the few books that completely agrees with my view on life and the world and so I view it as the pinnacle of teaching through literature. Not that LOTR is a didactic work by any means. However, I think it just encapsulates so fully in such a real way the mindset that modern society has lost. Things still have value in Middle-earth that we do not care about.

Put it this way, I have a book called The Philosophy of Tolkien, by Peter Kreeft, and it is one of my favorites since it combines two of my three favorite authors (the other being G. K. Chesterton, for the curious).

Which leads naturally to:

Uh, yep, pretty much.

NO KIDDING! THE EYE OF SAURON... HE'S ALWAYS WATCHING...

...except, of course, he has eyes...

Okay, okay, so I also wasted time looking up the Slenderman mythos today. I find it hard to take seriously, particularly when I was introduced to it by a classmate dressing up as him (it?) for Halloween and proceeding to scare everyone else in the building. Made even funnier by another classmate's disgusted admonition for the fake Slendy to go put his jeans back on... the suit was rather tight.

He wore the suit to class, too. We were giving presentations that day. LOL. Good times, good times.

We all hated that class, anyway. I'm fairly sure by the last presentation we had to give at least some of us were trolling the teacher with the topics we were picking. I was. I decided to talk about the advantages of nuclear energy. I believe in nuclear energy anyway, so it's not as if I was lying, but still... I picked it because I hoped it would annoy her.

Goodness, I'm such a troll.

Once again, this is why nerds win.

My copy of The Return of the King looks just like that!!!! ...I always did wonder why they picked that picture, though. Couldn't they have picked one where Aragorn looks cleaner and, um, kinglier? Also, really, why did they have to zoom in so much? Couldn't they have baaaaaacked out a little?
Just sayin'.

 

And that is J. R. R. Tolkien's drawing of Smaug in the background there. You can just make out Bilbo's silhouette in the bottom right-hand corner, underneath com. Why is he in a cloud, you ask? It's meant to represent the invisibility of the Ring.

Yes, very true. I tend to get a little defensive when things I love are downed, and LOTR qualifies as something I feel strongly about. *sighs and shakes head* I still cannot believe that guy said there are better science fiction writers out there than J. R. R. Tolkien. I mean, that's approaching blasphemy in my books.

Math major. Must have no appreciation for literature. I mean, they admitted grammar confused them..

I must be very weird in being able to use both the math side and the literature sides of my brain all the time. Scientific fact: the part of the brain that integrates the two sides (the corpus callosum) is wider and larger in women than in men.

Ha.

You don't across true majesty very often, Simba. Don't waste this opportunity.

Seriously, it is impossible NOT to love Martin Freeman. The guy is simply hilarious.

One does not simply become as funny as Martin Freeman.

Or as majestic as Richard Armitage.

They're laws of nature.

I want that card.

That would be so awesome if all teachers used that stamper. Granted, I probably wouldn't be glad to see such a mark on my test, but even so... You get the point.

Good guy Viggo. Actually, though, I have heard rumors on Twitter that Aragorn will appear at some point in one of the two remaining Hobbit movies. Just a rumor, though, nothing more.

On that subject:

Apparently, he also liked to wear his sword around everywhere, even out to eat. I think the police stopped him once or twice, too. The man was dedicated. It's great to see that he has such a wonderful spiritual successor in Richard Armitage.

Now... goodness. What a flame war I could start by asking people to state whether they prefer Aragorn or Thorin... I guess it's no question which of the two is more majestic, though! I said that all along. Thorin looks like a king from the get-go, while Aragorn takes three movies to get to that point.

More flame bait: who has the better beard?

I'm biased in favor of the Dwarves on that one... Fili has the best moustache, though Bofur takes second place.

Goodness, I'm judging Dwarf beards now. Better get back to pictures.

Done by artmediocre.tumblr.com. So apparently Richard Armitage said in an interview that he used to play ping pong with Graham McTavish. Tolkien fans being what they are... this happened.

And this:

Aaaaaaand this:

Not my idea, but who else thinks that Dwalin should dual-wield his ping pong paddles, and that they should be named Server and Smasher? His twin axes are, of course, named Ukhlat and Umraz, which means Grasper and Keeper, as I may have explained before. Hilariously, Graham McTavish got the idea from the names of the pet dogs of one of the Bronte sisters. LOL.

I just now noticed how computer-generated that guy looks... Or is he actually computer-generated? He certainly has some help from Photoshop.

I actually saw one of those commercials on TV the other day - I can't remember where we were, but I elbowed my sister and said, "Hey, look! It's the guy in the memes!"

My life is pretty weird when I recognize stuff from memes...

According to the person who blogged this: enhasa: True story: Gandalf appears at University of Minnesota during exams, going around telling people ominously “You shall not pass.”

That would be so awesome, though.

I found a musical mix of, "You shall not pass!" complete with the Shire music ("Concerning Hobbits", for those of you inclined to look up videos of the soundtrack, which is GLORIOUS) the other day. Can't remember how I found it. I think it was a link from TORn.

It actually wasn't me playing around with the search bar for once.

For once.

Sorry, these sons of Durin with the glasses are just too funy. Kaboom.

Oh, and look what I found:

Poster's comment: Best thing about the BBC Robin Hood series? Richard Armitage in black leather. I'm just saying.

Uhh... yeah... um... moving along...

Or, um, maybe not...

Um, yeah, we'd better move along before I do something as undignified as squeeing or something...

Moving along!

Looks like William Kircher didn't get the memo that this was supposed to be a serious picture take... Personally, I can't wait to see more of Bifur in the next two films. He's priceless enough in the background as it is - chewing on hanging sausage as Bombur makes off with the cheese, toasting with lettuce in his flagon, roasting silverbeet in Rivendell, playing with a windup bird as they all fall into Goblintown, you name it...

I suppose I need to post this in honor of how I wasted time today:

I am not looking any further into this show, I am not looking any further into this show, I am not looking any further into this show...

I will not, however, say the word 'never', as that is always guaranteed to get me into that fandom.

I also need to stop looking at screenshot #3. That face. Gah. Must post something else to distract myself.

Not mentioning the smile in #6 either. Nope. Not me. I am very indifferent.

Bilbo running through everywhere where he should not. I can't identify all of the scenes... but there's Harry Potter and The Avengers and that looks like Sherlock in the bottom left... Of course, some of these might be stock photos.

I have also seen HOUSE BAGGINS : THERE AND BACK AGAIN. So epic, both of them.

It should really be HOUSE DURIN, though, not HOUSE MAJESTIC, though that is a nice nod to the meme.

Aaaaaand guess whose position we are all in.

Yup.

No more words necessary.

And so Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan arrived at the premiere of Hidalgo (which I have actually seen), wherein Viggo Mortensen plays a guy riding the eponymous horse Hidalgo in a race (and wins, of course - I'm not spoiling anything! They always win in the end) riding stick horses. This is hysterical.

On a side note, Dom looks so young here....

 

Of course not. There are no coincidences.

So, exactly how many pictures did I post? I never bother to keep count. And I still have quite a ways to go.

Hoo boy.

In Pace Christi,

Elyse