Lost: A Sense of Proportion

So, over at great_tales there's a variation of the "Ice Bucket Challenge" going around. (Details here - no donations to charities or actual dousing with water, just a bit of fun. Within 24 hours of being nominated, you need to post a fic or piece of art involving an ice bucket, set in any fandom you choose.) As goldvermilion87 nominated me... here I am. :)

LOTR may not be the most obvious choice, but eh, it was the first thing that popped into my head. Also, it has a way of reigniting my enthusiasm for writing.

( Ice Bucket Challenge fic! )

 In honor of cairistiona7's birthday - LOTR fic!

Though my love for Tolkien's works certainly hasn't faded, I haven't been much involved in LOTR fanfiction circles for a number of years, and it has been so long so long since I've actually written anything for it. But the ficlet I wrote for the Great Tales DD exchange got me itching to really try my hand at LOTR fic again, and Cairistiona was gracious enough give me permission to draw upon some of the things she's established in her own stories - for instance, the names of Halbarad's wife and children. (For which I'm very grateful, because her stories have influenced my developing perspective on enough things that I'd have probably wound up drawing upon them as source material even if I didn't intend to!)

I didn't wind up getting the whole story finished in time for her birthday, but I decided to go ahead and post the first part anyway, since it stands on its own fairly well and doesn't end on a terrible cliffhanger, at least. *g*

(Not beta'd, because... I've never gotten my act together enough to find one for my fanworks. Shame on me. XP)

( Out of the Cold (part 1) )

I'm WARM! I'm finally warm!

Heheheh. Yeah, it's seemed like it has been feeling unusually cold in the basement (where I sleep, and do the vast majority of my work) this year. And then, just last night, my dad made a discovery - apparently, my brother forgot to switch around the vents like he was supposed to. Y'see, the design of our house, while pretty, is somewhat less than efficient. So, when we have the A/C going in the summer, we close off all the vents to the basement and fully open the upstairs ones, so that things stay fairly balanced. In the winter, we switch that around, so the basement stays warm enough and the top floor doesn't get overheated. The switch-around is usually done by my brother and/or dad, because the vents downstairs are all on the ceiling, and kind of hard to get to. Only this year it... somehow didn't actually happen. Until last night. XD

So - today I was warm! Yay!

Also, we went to see The Hobbit in 3D for Nef's birthday. (Though not in the higher frame rate.) I wanted to see it that way, just because theaters are the only place you can really get that experience, but I wasn't expecting too much. I'm... not a big fan of 3D, generally, although it's sometimes very impressive with animated movies. Those glasses, though, particularly when you already wear normal glasses, just... blargh.

I was very pleasantly surprised, though. For the first few minutes, I wondered a bit if we shouldn't have just opted for regular 2D instead. But wow... Yes, I'm glad we did see it. I think the CG - somewhat to my surprise - looked better that way. It really brought out the intense attention to detail in the costuming, and some of the sets, as well. (Both Nef and I, as it turned out, were somewhat mesmerized by the water in the foreground during certain shots of the White Council. *g*) And some scenes - particularly the scene with the stone giants, which I'd been pretty "meh" about previously - played to much better effect in the 3D. And the part at the end with the eagles was just gorgeous. And wooooow, that moment at the end when Smaug's eye pops open? O.O I think it might've been worth it to see it in 3D just for how awesome that was. 

Even aside from the 3D, though, I did enjoy it more the second time around, as I'd expected from previous experiences. The overall tone seemed more internally consistent. Mostly, I think, because my brain didn't keep snagging on little surprises. And there were a number of small details that I noticed that just really pleased me. Among them: I'd thought the first time that there were a couple of dark-haired elves without helmets riding with Elrond who might've been the twins. But this time - do my eyes deceive me, or did I actually catch a glimpse of Glorfindel there as well? :D Yeah, probably just wishful thinking. But I am such a huge Glorfindel fan.

So yeah, I'm pleased overall. I do see that some of the criticisms I've read from others are valid ones, either from a movie making perspective or from a book-fan perspective. And there are things that bug me, too. But... I don't know. 


( I shall now move on to pointless and probably confusing ramblings about movies and books. )

At any rate - happy birthday to nefhiriel! Love you lots, tithen muinthel-nin. ;)

I hate computers. Hate them, hate them, HATE THEM. I am severely tempted to just throw mine against the wall and have done with it.

On a less "done with life now, kthx" note... Midnight showing of The Hobbit tonight! We got tickets a while back, and were able to get them for a regular showing (I'd like to see the 3D at some point in theaters... but not the first time), so all set there.

I was originally thinking that I'd dress up, but then... Well, the elf costume that I wore for TTT and ROTK doesn't exactly fit me well anymore, and without the past-waist-length hair isn't nearly as effective anyway. And then we arranged for another family we know to come along with us - much more recent fans, who've never been to a midnight showing of a movie before - and seeing as they're not nearly such die-hard fans... certain family members persuaded me that it'd be better not to scare them off to badly. *g* So, planning on no dressing up.

But then, just the day before yesterday, the youngest member of ther family who'll be coming along (one of their boys, about - ten, I think?) informed me that he is definitely going to be in costume. Any excuse, apparently. Annnnd... he wanted Nef and me to dress up too, so he wouldn't be the only one. SO. Change of plans! Not sure if Nef'll be in costume (will depend on how she's feeling), but I'm gonna be going as a hobbit. 

If I get any good ones, I might put up pictures of my costume tomorrow. Not too bad, I think, for something improvised within a day and a half out of things I had lying around. ;D (Sadly, I think that going barefoot will be out of the question. In a Minnesota winter, with about a foot of snow on the ground... frostbite would not be a particularly fun conclusion to the evening. *sighs*)

Thirty. Thousand. Words. I did it. I have never written that much in a month, ever. Longest story I've written was just over 30,000 words - and that one took me about six months. Not that that was necessarily the only thing I wrote on during that time, but yeah. So happy! :D
 
Heheh, I actually came surprisingly close to not making it at the last minute, though. Today and yesterday I was pretty much fighting every step of the way, with absolutely no motivation, and grinding out those words was painful. Although, surprisingly, I actually do really like what I got done. And I got through several really tough spots in the story, too! (Heh, which, yes, could have a leetle something to do with my lack of eagerness to get at it. :P) If it hadn't been for the knowledge that falling less than 2,500 words short of the goal at that point in the game would be well and truly pathetic... 

I am just really pleased with the overall progress I managed, though. 

( General summary of accomplishments. )

Also got a bit of arty stuff done recently, so I think I'll post a handful of pics while I'm here. ^.^
( Few art stuffs. :3 )

Tomorrow - time to start catching up on the other things I haven't been keeping up/commenting on lately. *g*

Y'know, baby seals are cute and all, but what we really need to be focusing on is SAVING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!

Ahem.

But I'll get to that in a minute - first, some good news. It appears that three LOTR actors have now been approached about being in the Hobbit: Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, and Viggo Mortensen. Eee! The only one I've heard is officially on is Ian McKellen, but that is just SO exciting! *bounces happily* This would seem to indicate that they're looking at doing some Aragorn backstory in the movie that's supposed to be a "bridge" between The Hobbit and LOTR. YES!