beyond the wide world's end

I am back in the United States! I was, oh god, in transit for twenty-four hours again -- well, I was up for more than twenty-four hours, I was in transit for about twenty-two. OH JOY. A semi flipped over on I-90 eastbound, so the shuttles were delayed. We stopped to pick up the passengers that had been stranded in North Bend when they closed the Pass for about three hours to clear the road (the other shuttle took the Yakima-bound passengers, we took the Ellensburg-bound passengers), and then the girls sitting behind me started talking about how this was their worst travel experience ever, their trip took eight hours instead of two, which, okay, BUT...ladies, have I got some stories to tell you about terrible travel experiences. But at this point it was late enough that I was too exhausted to make poor conversational decisions, thankfully (it was about eleven pm, a.k.a., wow, it is like five in the morning in England).

...but I did eventually make it back home. Weirdly, this is the second time coming back from England that the shuttle has been delayed or cancelled and the five o'clock shuttle has had it much worse than the eight o'clock, which is what I've been taking because of when the BA flight from Heathrow gets in. My actual travel experience getting from Leicester to Seattle was relatively painless except for the nine and a half hour flight, but even that wasn't too bad. I mean, for a nine and a half hour flight that was delayed by about an hour. I read my book, started my other book, watched Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (verdict: violent, way incestuous which I'm obviously into, but I'm strongly side-eyeing the part where they have to violently murder all the (female) witches) and Rise of the Guardians (verdict: whoa, I loved it, which really surprised me because I didn't expect to. The last time I watched an animated movie on the plane it was Up and I kind of hated Up. But Rose of the Guardians did some things that I really loved and I want to see it again).

Presumably because I spent all of yesterday hauling my suitcase around England and America, I woke up this morning and my arms were killing me. Have been killing me all day, although less so now. I'm sure my wrist problems don't help (I was in mild agony at a couple points yesterday because I had no options for doing anything for them aside from some stretches and sitting there weeping), but given that the pain is not focused on my wrists and I put in that much effort, I feel fairly safe in saying it's not related.

I started reading The Fellowship of the Ring on the plane and, because I haven't reread LotR in over ten years, I forgot that I used to have the hugest fictional character crush on book!Merry. He was probably my third book crush (after Odysseus and Jack Clayton/Korak). That part at the beginning where the Sackville-Bagginses are all, "You're not a Baggins, you -- you're a Brandybuck!" to Frodo and Frodo says, "Did you hear that Merry? That was an insult, if you like." "It was a compliment," said Merry Brandybuck, "and so, of course, not true." MERRY <3 <3 <3 I haven't read these in so long, I forgot that Merry was actually the sensible caretaking one in the books. (I love the movies, but man, I can't see Dom Monaghan's Merry here at all, though I'm not that far into it, so we'll see.)

Er, and the main point of this post is: I am back at home! Home is weird. All the cars are wrong and on the wrong side of the road and I keep saying "pounds" instead of "dollars" and then getting frustrated.

(Oh, also my parents sold the car they told me they bought for me last year. "Honey, we bought you a car! Oh, you can't use it because your father is using it. Oh, you can use it. Oh, by the way, we traded in the Corolla for a Camry." "...so you told me you bought me a car (sort of as a graduation present) and now you no longer have said car. This is really making me rethink coming home for a year off because now I just want to stay in England (not because of the car thing).")

Today we went to the new Cabela's in Yakima and I walked in and kind of froze because walking into a Cabela's is sort of like walking into a giant cliche of American machismo, which is...kind of a big culture shock after having been in England for the past six months, can I just say.

What the fuck, iTunes, why is all my music in FUCKING PICTURES?

...well, at least I know where it is after I opened up iTunes and everything was gone for the second time in three days, but WHAT. WHAT. I DON'T EVEN.

I honestly don't have the energy to deal with this at very nearly midnight on a Monday, so I will fix it in the morning, but WHAT THE FUCK. (I don't know how it got there, but I guess that makes sense because of the album artwork? I don't even know.)

(For reference, and in case this happens to everyone else: after some frantic googling, I did what someone suggested and just did a search on my computer for "mp3" which, thank fuck, got me all the music that was no longer present, and I chased it back to...Pictures. I. Don't. Even. Know.)

But I am now afraid of, on top of actually shutting my computer down, closing iTunes, SO THANKS FOR THAT, UNIVERSE.

*

My mood is almost such to rec another BotFA art set, but if I don't have the energy to fuck around with iTunes again I don't have the energy to chase down links. I expect to see a lot more Thorin/Thranduil fanart over the next few months, though, after last night's Desolation of Smaug sneak peek. (I didn't see it, but I've seen clips. MY BABIES. And now I shall go back to my pre-AUJ freaking out that OH MY GOD WHAT IF IT'S TERRIBLE.)

I have, however, come to the conclusion that the Mirkwood elves are clearly the redneck hillbilly elves of Middle Earth. (Actually, I think I was already of that opinion due to an old, old fic from the LotR days; IDK if the canon actually backs that up or not.)

*

I am in a weird mood where I just want to post stuff, so in conclusion, have a dwarf backstory snippet. Actually, I shouldn't say "backstory" here, since this scene is concurrent with the present chapters of Dust and I'm probably going to end up reworking it-slash-rewriting it from a different POV (we'll see) to actually fit it in, since it works in nicely with some of the stuff planned for Dust III.

(I keep thinking we've seen these two before -- well, we have, but very very briefly -- because I wrote about half a chapter of a Jill POV that keeps getting pushed back because of the Murder Island subplot, and they feature prominently there. Sometimes I forget what I've written v. what I've posted.)

Slang definition from earlier in this scene: "Folly” was slang for a member of one of the more outré Circle cults, though usually the only the way you could tell was if they happened to be a divine. This bloke clearly was, given the four-source chain he had around his neck.

( the other two Ironstones )

I have no idea what this is, y'all. And I'm certainly not writing it, because I have no idea what it is.

( I don't even know )

I was really hoping to have coherent thoughts about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey after the second time I saw it, and yet, it still rests at FEELINGS ALL THE FEELINGS ALL THE TIME FEELINGS, which to be fair, pretty much sums it up.

Totally unrelatedly, there now appear to be gratuitous hot dwarves in Dust. Can't imagine how they got there.

In conclusion, the best Hobbit fanart you will ever see. Linking here instead of the original post because of the commentary.

Also this week we have watched Sharpe's Eagle and Sharpe's Company, starring Sean Bean, which leads my father to remark during the council scene, "He looks like he'd rather be back in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon might have been tough, but he wasn't pure evil like Sauron! And the French aren't orcs!"

I remember there was a lot of criticism of Orlando Bloom's Legolas (who I really like, by the way) when LotR first came out (and oh, but I have memories of going to see LotR in theatres!), but if you give culture shock -- dealing with humans! and dwarves! and hobbits! probably for the first time in his life, unless you count the time the dwarves got taken prisoner by Thranduil in The Hobbit -- his character portrayal makes a lot more sense. Of course he hangs out with Aragorn a lot; Aragorn was raised by elves, so they're practically of the same species.

It may be the Sharpe thing bleeding over, but I found myself liking Boromir a lot more this time, and I couldn't put my finger on why until the last scene, where Boromir's blowing his horn, and then I knew:

Basically, Boromir is Susan Pevensie.

Or, shall I say, Boromir is Susan redeemed. Both of them are the only two characters to doubt and fall (and one can argue this in LotR, but the situation further on in the trilogy is slightly different), but unlike Susan, Boromir manages to redeem himself in the end. Susan just falls -- diminishes, and goes into the West, and remains Susan Pevensie. To, uh, mix characters in LotR. The rest of them rise to glory; she and Boromir fall.

Also, both of them have horns. There's something here that I can't quite put my finger on yet. *muses* (Perhaps my senior honors thesis can be on similarities in post-War British fantasy literature, hmm?)