beyond the wide world's end

I wrote a rec over on Tumblr for the Star Wars: Knight Errant comics, which are by John Jackson Miller and a passel of different artists and are so good. So good. They aren't my favorite Star Wars comics, but they're up there.

Cut and pasted from my Tumblr rec:

Knight Errant takes place during the Old Republic, about a thousand years before the movies, while the Republic is involved in a decades-long war against the Sith. During a blitzkrieg raid on a Sith world, the young Jedi Knight Kerra Holt becomes trapped behind Sith lines with no way to get back to the Republic. At the point when the first arc, “Aflame”, takes place, Kerra is eighteen and has only been a Knight for about a week, and she finds herself in the unenviable position of having her entire Jedi strike team killed around her, including her friend and mentor. Now on her own, Kerra decides to do the only thing she can as a Jedi and fight the varied Sith lords in any way she can, saving civilians right and left.

Knight Errant fascinates me because of the world-building, because all the Sith lords — and there are quite a few! — are very different and very distinct, as are the worlds they rule. The big two are Daiman, who believes he’s the creator of the universe, and Odion, who wants to be its destroyer, but there are a number of other Sith, as well as non-Sith antagonists. (I bet you never expected to see a Hutt wearing a jetpack and dueling a Jedi in zero gravity! NOW YOU CAN!) John Jackson Miller, the author, has clearly done his research on everyday life under totalitarian governments; Knight Errant isn’t all lightsaber duels and space battles. There’s a lot of page space and thought that goes into the civilians who are just trying to make it by on Sith-ruled worlds.

The other thing I really like about Knight Errant is that Kerra isn’t exactly a sympathetic hero. I reblogged an article the other day about the importance of the unlikable heroine and Kerra Holt definitely fits into that mold. She’s rash, impulsive, self-righteous, equal parts selfless and selfish, idealistic, bloodthirsty, ruthless, and prone to mood swings depending on her circumstances. She can be grating at times, and is occasionally very petty and very judgmental. And she’s amazing.

Another reason Knight Errant is really interesting is because it has both a comic component and a novel component. The novel, just called Star Wars: Knight Errant (also written by John Jackson Miller), takes place between the first TPB and the second. You don’t need to start with volume one in order to read the novel, and you don’t need to read the novel in order to read volume two, but it’s very, very interesting to see how these characters and situations translate from comics to the page, and there’s some great worldbuilding in the novel.

Links to Amazon over on Tumblr, since the digital editions of the comics are only $1.99 today for Star Wars Day.

As past experience has proven, if I say I'm going to do a more substantial review and wait on it, I shall probably never do it, so best to do so now instead of waiting.

HOLY SHIT, Y'ALL, THIS BOOK.

Star Wars: Kenobi, by John Jackson Miller, takes place immediately following Revenge of the Sith, as Obi-Wan is trying to settle in to life on Tatooine, before he becomes the crazy old Ben of A New Hope. And for a novel that's actually named after a character, a lot of it isn't about Obi-Wan, which is what makes it so brilliant. Because Obi-Wan isn't a viewpoint character. (While Obi-Wan does have a POV, sort of, the only time anything actually appears from his POV is when he's meditating.)

In fact, the name "Obi-Wan" only appears four times in the entire book, three times within the same few sentences, and the use of it is very, very deliberate. ( quote, spoilers )

I've been thinking a lot about fanfic and tie-ins recently, since I've been reading a lot of Star Wars tie-ins. It's a less obvious link when those tie-ins aren't dealing with movieverse characters -- anything set before the lifetime of the PT characters, largely; I don't have much interest in anything set after the OT. But tie-ins where movieverse characters are major or secondary characters, or which deal with movieverse events (novels set during the Clone Wars, for example, or set between ANH and ESB) are another beast entirely, because in some ways they are essentially fanfiction, just published and authorized fanfiction. But tie-ins -- interstitial tie-ins specifically, since (and someone who actually knows stuff about the post-OT EU can back me up here) tie-ins that take place after the main canon has been closed are yet another beast -- are a lot more limited than fic, because you can't have really, really major events in a tie-in, rather than on the big screen, so to speak: while there are lots of big events that take place in the Star Wars EU between TPM and RotS (whether in novels, comics, or the two TV series), there's no way to have Anakin's discovery, Qui-Gon's death, the start of the Clone Wars, or Palpatine's reveal, Anakin's fall, and Order 66 in a piece of secondary material. In fic, you can do that; you don't have to worry about the Hand of God or George Lucas saying NOPE NOPE NOPE. (I've also noticed that tie-ins tend to have a lot more blatant emotionalism even than fanfic, but I'm not sure if that's a characteristic of the genre or just of a couple of specific authors.)

Kenobi is an interstitial tie-in, since it's bounded by RotS and ANH. We know where Obi-Wan is before it starts; we know where Obi-Wan has to be by the time it ends. We know that Obi-Wan's story is essentially not going anywhere, which is one reason that there is very little EU material that involves Obi-Wan during the nineteen years between RotS and ANH. Miller slides around that conundrum (how do you tell a story about a character who isn't going anywhere except emotionally?) by not making the novel about Obi-Wan.

Let's back up.

The Pika Oasis, a small settlement on the edge of the Jundland Wastes. Annileen Calwell runs Dannar's Claim, the only general store for kilometers around. It's a small, more or less self-sustaining community largely populated by moisture farmers. Over the past four years, attacks by Tusken Raiders (the Sand People) have been on the rise, and the settlers around the Oasis have banded together to form a posse that reacts to raids if the alarm goes off. Of course, settlers who want to be protected by this posse have to pay for the privilege, but it seems a small sacrifice. Heading up the posse is Orrin Gault, a friend of Annileen's late husband. It's a system that seems to work well, as does Annileen's and Orrin's friendly relationship.

For the Sand People, things are changing rapidly, and in ways that threaten their millennia-old traditions. Reprisal attacks by settlers and changing environmental conditions have winnowed their numbers, forcing them to adapt their traditions or die. Four years earlier, an entire tribe of Sand People died under mysterious circumstances, further lessening their numbers. Leading the tribe near the Jundland Wastes is the one-eyed Tusken A'Yark -- called Plug-Eye by the settlers -- who wants nothing more than to clear the settlers from what was once Tusken land.

Into this comes a new settler, a stranger who calls himself Ben. Newcomers are a rare sight around here, especially ones who want to live so far from civilization. Despite his apparent reluctance to get involves in the community, he and Annileen soon become friends.

Sound familiar? That's right: Star Wars: Kenobi is a Western.

It's great. Miller always refers to the non-native residents of Tatooine, even the ones who have been there for generations, as settlers, because that's what they are -- still scratching at the surface of the world, essentially farming the rarest product on the planet: water. The Tuskens have a very distinct (and alien) voice and culture, but they're never presented as black-and-white bad guys (and they aren't the primary antagonists of the novel) and the impact of the settlers on their culture is never whitewashed by Miller. There's even a background robber baron, so to speak, ( spoilers )

. Obi-Wan is the mysterious stranger who rides in from out of town, trouble seeming to follow in his wake, who knows a lot about a lot, but not much about Tatooine.

Annileen and A'Yark are both great, fully-fledged characters -- Kenobi is their story as much as it is Obi-Wan's, maybe more so. Even in Star Wars, it's rare to see a novel where the main character is a middle-aged widow with two teenage children who doesn't need a man, who's perfectly capable of holding her own, and Annileen is that woman. She's not royalty like Padme Amidala or Leia Organa, or a Jedi like Ahsoka Tano or Aayla Secura; she's a shopkeeper and a mother and a woman with a life of her own, friends, and dreams that she never quite managed to fulfill. ( spoilers )

There's a lot going on in this novel about identity, as there should be for a novel that's named after a character. It's also a novel haunted by ghosts -- not literal ones, I should hasten to add, since this is Star Wars and anything is possible, but the ghosts of the past. Tusken habits are changing because of Anakin's slaughter of the tribe in AotC. Obi-Wan carries the weight of the dead with him in every waking moment. Annileen's shop is her dead husband's legacy to her. But Kenobi never wallows in any of it, which is a surprise and a delight. The closest that it comes is in Obi-Wan's meditations, and he always cuts himself off before he can wallow. Miller doesn't need to have Obi-Wan wallow or dwell on Order 66; the reader knows what happens.

And that, I think, is the real difference between this novel and a lot of the other interstitial tie-ins I've read recently. Miller trusts the reader to remember the events of the PT; he never has to sit down and say, okay, kids, so the Republic fell and now there's an empire, all the Jedi are dead, Obi-Wan Kenobi's life is terrible. Because the reader knows that. Nobody picks up this kind of novel without already knowing that. But quite a few tie-in authors don't trust their readers, which is why you have the kind of blatant emotionalism in some novels that basically tells you what you already know, just in case you couldn't pick it up on the screen. (It's a show, don't tell issue, and certainly isn't limited to tie-ins or to fanfic because I've also seen it in purely original fiction, but it strikes me the most about those two genres because it echoes and tries to explain what already appears in the canon.)

I can't really ever think of tie-ins critically without comparing them to fanfic, because they do the same thing -- work in and around the existing canon to tell a story. This is probably the best example that I've seen so far, which I think is because it isn't Obi-Wan's story. I don't think Miller could have written this novel from Obi-Wan's POV and had it be as good as it is. From an outside POV, it works because he trusts the reader: we know why Obi-Wan is on Tatooine, we know what his secret sorrow is, we know what his history is, we know what that mysterious blue light that sometimes appears around him in the midst of firefights is, and we know where his story ends. There's no need to write that from his POV. It would be extremely difficult to sustain a novel on that.

On Twitter earlier I said that Kenobi is the profic equivalent of synecdochic's SGA fic Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose. It's an apt comparison; it's the same "the meaning of life is do the next thing" type of genre. They're very different stories, but it's the kind of genre you never expect to see in a pro tie-in novel. And it's brilliant.

Just a note: Kenobi has a couple of nods to the EU, but it's rooted entirely in the movies and you can read it without knowing anything about the EU. It's entirely self-sustaining aside from assuming that the reader has seen the PT.

( notable bits, spoilers, now I'M going to wallow in blatant emotionalism )

Seriously, if you like the PT and you ever wanted to read one tie-in novel: read this one. It's fantastic. It's everything a tie-in novel could and should be. And the cover art (by Chris McGrath) is amazing. I want it in poster size so I can put it on my wall and sigh over it.

4/29: (themed: archers and archery)
Beware the Sea by sceithailm
Fili by larbestaaargh
Archery Lesson by lookimadeasomething
Dis and Frerin by kannibal
Arrow of Durin by studiomia

4/30: (themed: modern!AU)
'It's technically correct' by kaciart
modern!Fili and Kili by hvit-ravn
Hipster Bofur by lanimalu
baker Fili and Kili by miusart
Thorin and Dwalin, Thorin and Dwalin again, and Fili and Kili by evankart

5/4: (themed: book-based art)
Bilbo Baggins and Long Way by CG-warrior
Thorin Oakenshield and There and Back Again by gold-seven
The Arkenstone by ullakko
Balin, Bombur, and Dori by ancalinar
He came alone, and in bear's shape... by sceithailm
Gandalf the Grey by lucasgraciano

5/8: (themed: young dwarves)
Shield-Brothers by qed221b
'Look, Mama!' by kaciart
Bofur, Bifur, and Bombur by vera-ist-44
Blunt those knives by erry
the brothers Ri by petitpotato

5/9: (themed: villains)
taking tea by bridgioto
Gollum by cg-warrior
Thieves! Fire! Murder! by dragonsoul2
Azog the Defiler and the Great Goblin by dwalinroxxx
Azog the Defiler by axlsalles

5/11: (themed: Thorin Oakenshield)
Got Lost Twice by kimberly80
Thorin by goobo
Thorin and His Mountain by ancalinar
scarred Thorin by fetalnightmare
Thorin Oakenshield by nautilusl2

5/13: (themed: Thorin & Dwalin)
War Dance by qed221b
Ered Luin by ramida_r
Fanboy by megatruh
young Thorin and Dwalin in Ered Luin by spesiria
old and gray by ladynorthstar

Today I managed to get stuff done by sheer virtue of making up a reasonably detailed to-do list that started with "get up before 11 am" and included meals. (If "before 11 am" sounds late, factor in that my sleep schedule somehow managed to get even more fucked up and I went to bed at 4 am. Although "before 11 am" was what I was aiming for even when I was only going to bed at 2 or 3. I'm not even going to bed that late because of schoolwork -- I am not doing as much schoolwork as I'd like to be, but at least I'm doing some every day -- I just...am.)

I keep buying (and taking, thankfully) vitamins and supplements in the vague hope that they'll actually have some effect. My mother and (American) grandmother are both big proponents of vitamins, but I got out of the habit of taking them when I was in undergrad and again, this year, because I -- um, this is awkward -- I don't usually eat enough at breakfast to balance it out, so I generally get slightly nauseous afterwards. And I don't usually remember to take them with dinner every day. But I've been better at it since my wrists flared up last month, so there's that. And I've never had a problem with pills, thankfully.

My wrists are still fucked up, if anyone's wondering. It's mostly the left wrist that's in actual pain, though the right wrist has its moments too. My left wrist flared up big time today while I was in city centre with English Flatmate N., obviously when I didn't have any painkillers on me. Usually it's so low-level that I won't go for the ibuprofen -- we've established I have issues with painkillers, yeah? Which means that the doctor's advice that I cut down on the hobbies and take painkillers was somewhat less than helpful. Also I never actually think that painkillers will work. (I...I have issues.)

*

I finally finished reading Tom Holland's book Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic today. (I need to return it to the library because I need to take out more books and I can't figure out how to make the library photocopiers make photocopies properly, so I can't return the two issues of the Journal of Roman Archaeology I have out yet. Ugh, stupid 25 book limit.) I just have so many Roman Republic feels, y'all. I mean, the empire has its moments, but it will always be the Republic for me -- and the Late Republic is frankly hilarious, but it's also so sad, because it's just this slow unstoppable slide into the empire. It's the Middle Republic that I like the best; I always default to the Punic Wars, of course, because the Republic and the Hannibalic War frankly amaze me. It's just...I have so many feelings about the Roman Republic.

In retrospect, it really shouldn't be a surprise that I'm attracted to the period of history that hits the same emotional notes for me that my favorite fandoms, pairings, and tropes do. I am very predictable. (And my favorite historical figure fits pretty neatly into the same space as a lot of my favorite fictional characters, too. Obviously he is from that period. Weirdly he is not a Roman.)

*

Today's -- well, yesterday's, since it's 1:30 am over here (see above for my stupid sleeping schedule) -- Hobbit art rec theme is Thorin Oakenshield. Hopefully I won't repeat myself.

Got Lost Twice by kimberly80
Thorin by goobo
Thorin and His Mountain by ancalinar
scarred Thorin by fetalnightmare
Thorin Oakenshield by nautilusl2

Look, I can comfortably say that I am not going to run out of Thorin fanart to rec any time soon. *g*

The weather's been nice recently, so I've been leaving the windows in the kitchen and in my room open as much as I can just to get some fresh air in this apartment. Also because I've been feeling overheated lately, and actual air helps. It's right now that I really, really miss being at Tulane -- not just because I miss the weather, or the food, or my friends, or the environment, though that's all part of it. But I miss having a university campus that wasn't so alienating, where I was actually willing to go somewhere to work: inside, outside, library, PJ's, LBC, the quad, whatever. At Leicester, well, I basically walk up to the campus, flinch, go to the library, remember that I hate that library and take out five books instead of doing any work before fleeing back to my flat because the idea of being on that campus a second more than necessary is painful to me. (This backfires, I always miss my prof's office hours because I just don't want to be on campus, and also because I constantly forget things.)

I live right by the train tracks, next to a railway bridge. Every time I go into the kitchen, there's a train coming in or going out. There's something romantic about it, about looking down from so far up (I live on the ninth floor) and listening to the trains rolling along. (The trains themselves aren't romantic. I've been on those trains. Not romantic. Also, I always think of the massacre in Being Human, which is not what you want to think about when you're on a train.) It's nice. Peaceful. For thirty seconds or so until the kettle finishes boiling, anyway.

*

Today we will actually get a Hobbit art rec set! Shocking, it's...been a while. This week's round-up will include last week's sets too.

Today's Hobbit art rec theme is young dwarves.

Shield-Brothers by qed221b
'Look, Mama!' by kaciart
Bofur, Bifur, and Bombur by vera-ist-44
Blunt those knives by erry
the brothers Ri by petitpotato

Today has been a day of variable adulthood, but I have a tentative dissertation topic and, more importantly, I finally did what I have meaning to do for the past month or so and made an appointment to get my hair cut! I am very proud of myself, because I've been very anxious about it and it comes up two or three times a day. But the salon has online booking, so I didn't have to talk to anyone, and hopefully in a few days I will have hair that is no longer uneven and is slightly more manageable.

This means I get to stare at pictures of loose hair legitimately and try and decide how much I want to cut off -- I think I need to have at least five inches, and maybe a little more.

*

Apparently I can still have deep thinky thoughts about the actual Narnia canon several years on, instead of just making shit up the way I usually do. This is weirdly reassuring to me, since I've been deep in Revelations thoughts the past few days, and Revelations is, er, only loosely tethered to canon.

*

Today's Hobbit art rec theme is modern!AUs, because I kept running across new art.

'It's technically correct' by kaciart
modern!Fili and Kili by hvit-ravn
Hipster Bofur by lanimalu
baker Fili and Kili by miusart
Thorin and Dwalin, Thorin and Dwalin again, and Fili and Kili by evankart

The miusart piece is apparently actually fanart for a fic, which I haven't read because it's not my ship. The three evankart pieces I've had up in tabs for the past week or two, heh. (I just love how casually Thorin and Dwalin are touching there; it makes me smile every time I look at it.)

I actually haven't recced some of my favorite modern!AU art, since it's attached to my absolute favorite fic in the fandom and I haven't gotten around to reccing that yet. (It's been months, what's wrong with me, and I have, no lie, had it up in a tab since about January or February because I keep rereading it.)

4/22: (themed: art that tells a story)
young Fili and Kili on the run by kaciart
'You just have to take the axe out' and 'Welcome back to the land of the living, cousin' by bridgioto
two kids without the jackets by olivietta
'Mister, please, sell us this toy?' by ankad
Dis encountering a bear in the woods by ppitte

4/24: (themed: food and eating)
birthday cake and aftermath by olgg
Bilbo cooks for the company by kaciart
MEAT! by doublenegativemeansyes
You idiot children! by kannibal
Goodbye, food by hvit-ravn

4/25: (themed: Frerin)
Frerin by cidershark
Dwalin and Frerin by ankad
Thrain's Three by kannibal
Frerin, Thorin, and Dis by ladynorthstar
Thorin finds his brother after the Battle of Azanulbizar by papermachette

4/27: (themed: Durincest)
Fili and Kili: Kisses by irbisn
hello, brother by megatruh
'Kili, for the love of Aule, I'm okay, lad' by loobeeinthesky
'Are you sure?' by kaciart
Thorin and Fili by kaciart

*

And today's Hobbit art rec theme is: Dwalin.

Dwalin by avali
Dwalin by loudchai
Dwalin by kromitar
Dwalin, son of Fundin by studiomia
Balin and Dwalin, sons of Fundin by kristaferanka

It was going to be Dwalin with some of the others, then I realized that I nearly had enough to do a full set with just Dwalin, and then Balin slipped in at the last minute because I love that piece.

I'm sorry that I've been so upset lately. Actually, I'm going to come right out and say it: I'm sorry I've been so depressed lately. That's a loaded word and I'm nervous about using it, but sometimes I feel like saying that I've been "miserable" or "upset" is dancing around the point. I mean, yes, both of those are true. I've been miserable and I've been upset. I've been mentally, emotionally, and physically fraught these past few weeks, and I still am. I've been sleeping too much (even if I have trouble actually getting to sleep), I'm tired most of the time, I'm probably not eating or eating the right things, I feel like I'm constantly in pain in some part of my body, and even if I'm not actively in pain, I'm worrying about being in pain to the extent that I keep thinking I'm spontaneously causing pain (can you do that? I worry that I'm doing that). When I'm not stressed about my physical, mental, or emotional well-being I'm stressed about school: my papers for this term, my dissertation for the summer, what I'm doing next year. (At this point, reasonably certain I'm going to take a year off because dear god, I can't take three to nine more years of this right now.) I worry that I'm having wild mood-swings because I honestly can't tell if I'm having them or not.

And I don't have much of a filter, either in RL or online, so if you're following me on DW/LJ or Twitter, it's pretty much all just hanging out there. So I apologize for that. There hasn't been a whole lot of fannish squee or fic lately.

*

Today's Hobbit art rec theme is Frerin. Frerin is, as far as I know, another character who's only mentioned in the RotK appendices, rather than in the books themselves. Frerin in Thorin's younger brother, the second of Thrain's children, and he died young in the Battle of Azanulbizar (Tolkien gives his dates as 2751-2799). This being a fandom that's mighty fond of tragic brothers and epic family feels, there's actually quite a lot of Frerin artwork, just like there is for his sister Dis.

Like with Dis, there's no physical description of Frerin. He isn't a movie character (as far as we know, and while it's possible that he could show up in flashback in The Desolation of Smaug or There and Back Again, it seems even more unlikely that he'll appear than it does that Dis will), so we don't have any casting to go off of, and he isn't mentioned in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Chronicles at all, so if there was any concept art done for him, it wasn't meant to appear in AUJ. As far as I've seen, artists tend to go one of two ways with Frerin: he's either dark, like his brother Thorin, or fair, like his nephew Fili. In fact, there's quite a bit of artwork where he has similar beard and hair decorations to Fili, just like representations of Fili and Kili's father tend towards -- the moustache braids are a recurring example. (Interestingly, I've never yet seen a blonde Dis.) Frerin has actually shown up in a few pieces I've recced in the past, usually alongside Thorin and/or Dis, but once with Fili and Kili (though according to the timeline, he was dead long before they were born, because most depressing family ever).

Frerin by cidershark
Dwalin and Frerin by ankad
Thrain's Three by kannibal
Frerin, Thorin, and Dis by ladynorthstar
Thorin finds his brother after the Battle of Azanulbizar by papermachette

There are a few more, but I try not to repeat artists in a single rec post if I can help it. Previous rec sets that have included Frerin: 2/19 random, 3/13 Dis, 3/15 young dwarves, 3/24 Erebor before the dragon, and 4/22 art that tells a story. (Normally I wouldn't include previous rec sets that feature a character, but since he is, like Dis, sort of an odd one, I will this time. Also, wow, I didn't realize he'd shown up that many times.)

As an aside, I've been watching Vikings, and every single time that he shows up on screen, I keep thinking that Ragnar's brother Rollo (played by Clive Standen) would make a great Frerin. Maybe it's the hair and the beard, which are basically the same as Thorin's in AUJ.

4/16: (themed: cute and funny)
the birth of Gimli by papermachette
cookie monster by doublenegativemeansyes
Thranduil's decorating habits by flatbear
'I beg your pardon, lads, but GET. OFF.' by agehachou
Dwarf cats (and a Hobbit...guinea pig?) by lanimalu

4/19: (themed: happy and smile-making)
this is what Thorin sees every day when he gets home by twiningsard
Big Brother will handle this by pannechen
Drunk Durins by erry
I've never been so wrong in all my life...TWICE by besaid
young Ori with a rabbit by papermachette

4/20: (themed: Thorin reading to a young Fili and Kili)
Read us something by hvit-ravn/pabuttego
Dreams of Gold by emorenji
storytime by loobeeinthesky
The Folk by llano
facepalm by kaciart
bedtime stories by flatbear

4/21: (themed: characters meeting their actors or other characters played by their actors)
Kili meets Mitchell (from Being Human UK) by mutsunn
Dean and Aidan meet their characters by hvit-ravn
Dwarfsitting by lanimalu
Gollum, Thorin, and Bofur during the Hobbit livetweet session by pionochan

So today I spent an hour and a half doing my hair (this Lagertha-inspired hairstyle; I kind of messed up the sectioning so it looked messier, another in a fine tradition of TV- and movie- hairstyles that look like they take five minutes to do but actually take, well, an hour and a half), ate two and a half meals, which is up from the past week, started rereading one of my favorite novels, and discovered that my automatic, bone deep, deep-seated reaction to accidentally walking into a parade where there are fifes and drums and people carrying the British flag is to pump my fist in the air and yell, "Revolution!" You will be glad to know I refrained from doing so. My second reaction was, "Wait, why are there a bunch of small neckerchiefed children marching down the street?" (Apparently, the St. George's Day parade.)

Anyway, I was doing my hair today, and at about an hour in I was still doing my hair and wondering why I was doing it, what if it looked horrible, what was the point when I was going to take it out in the evening anyway, and then I finished it and it looked, if not quite like how it does in the tutorial, or quite like Lagertha's, pretty badass to my eyes (pics here and here -- the lighting in my room is terrible and that's off my webcam, so). And after that I went outside, and I was walking down the street thinking of the idea of clothes, hair, makeup, jewelry, etc., as armor. Because I finished that hairstyle, and even if it didn't look fabulous, even if it looked a little wild, even if the average person on the street had no idea what I was doing with it, I felt amazing. I felt like nothing could touch me. And after the week I've had, that felt pretty amazing.

*

Yesterday was...a bad day. The past few days have been pretty bad for me, and I don't know why though I have my guesses. A lot of things suddenly adding up. Which culminated in me writing a really long mopey e-mail to my mother that ended in me waking up this morning to two very alarmed e-mails from both my parents.

Today has been less bad, though right now it's threatening to slide right back into 'everything is awful' territory, which, gods, I wish there was some kind of magic switch to just turn that part of my brain off. Can technology please get on that?

I don't know what my hands are doing and that really upsets me. They're mostly okay, but I am, frankly, afraid to knit just in case I find that I can't. So that's upsetting. I keep worrying that my computer posture's off somehow, but I don't really know what else I can change at this point since I changed my typing posture already and there are a limited number of ways in which I can sit and not have my back pain flare up. (I guess it's my mouse-handling that's really worrying me, but I don't know what else I could do.)

*

Today's Hobbit art rec theme is rather a mixed bag: I was going for a whole set of characters meeting either their actors or other characters their actors have played, but I actually only came up with four instead of my usual five. (I suspect I had another and lost it somewhere. *shrug*) But yesterday there were six, so hopefully one short isn't too terrible a sin.

Kili meets Mitchell (from Being Human UK) by mutsunn
Dean and Aidan meet their characters by hvit-ravn
Dwarfsitting by lanimalu
Gollum, Thorin, and Bofur during the Hobbit livetweet session by pionochan

Actually, come to think of it, I am mildly certain that I've run across some Bilbo-meets-Watson and I've definitely found some -- oh god -- Smauglock art, but it's not the sort of thing that shows up on my usual sources and it's not something I've saved. I am mildly surprised that I haven't run into any Fili meets Anders art -- I think I've seen one more Kili meets Mitchell piece, but don't have it saved. (Unsurprisingly, a crossover pairing that's sprung up is Mitchell/Anders -- Aidan Turner's character from Being Human and Dean O'Gorman's character from The Almighty Johnsons. Oh, fandom. Never change.)