Seven Days Off

Day 7 of the June 1-30 Challenge.

Where would you like to visit on your next vacation? What would you do with seven days off? What is your idea of a perfect week-long vacation?

Well, I understand that Middle-earth is kind of…not an option, so the next best thing would be New Zealand. I haven’t quite decided what part of New Zealand yet, because there are Middle-earth locations everywhere, and I don’t know which is the best.

I mean, LOOK at that!! Who wouldn’t want to visit that, even if they weren’t a Middle-earth fan?

Six Songs I Love

Day 6 of the June 1-30 Challenge.

Write about and share six songs or artists you love or six songs you hate.

The word “songs” can cover such a wide variety of artistic creations. I’m pretty sure this was meant to be about pop culture songs you could hear on the radio, but I wouldn’t know, because when it comes to music I stay entirely out of what’s hot.

Luckily for me there are still musicals full of songs, and songs in movies that I love, and if I wanted to get really technical I could pull in any six of Tolkien’s poems, since those were all “songs.”

So here are six of those that I could listen to all day, or at least sing when I’m not listening to them:

Fellowship Members in 17 Syllables

I wanted to write my Two Towers movie review, but I didn’t have time, because it’s my brothers’ birthday! So instead you get haikus about each member of the Fellowship. Yay…

Gandalf:

Once grey, and then white
Much more than just fireworks
Powerful, but kind.

Aragorn:

Seemed mysterious
A Ranger who became king
Had a lot of names.

Legolas:

Happiest member
Skilled with a bow and arrows:
Perfect as always.

A-Z Challenge, Days 9-11

So I’m changing my posting schedule again. This is going to be weird for me, because I normally post Tuesdays and Thursdays, and now thanks to my “economical” A-Z challenge system and the fact we get Sundays off, I’m now posting on Wednesdays and Saturdays. For the month of April only. Unless I like this way better…

So without further ado, here’s Part 3!

April 11: I is for Indecisive

I’m a very impulsive person, and so indecision has never been much of a problem to me, because the right choice has always been a no-brainer. All that means, though, is that when something comes up that I can’t decide on instantly, I can’t decide on it at all. The problem right now being whether to take one of the two jobs being offered to me.

Unless acting is involved, I simply do not do people. And so I can’t do a job that is out of my comfortable room, and in the world somewhere. I’m a Baggins, not a Took. Well, actually I’m an Elf, but if I were a Hobbit I’d be all Baggins and no Took. Here is a passage from The Hobbit:

“Then Mr. Baggins turned the handle and went in. The Took side had won. He suddenly felt he would go without bed and breakfast to be thought fierce. As for little fellow bobbing on the mat it almost made him really fierce. Many a time afterwards the Baggins part regretted what he did now, and he said to himself: ‘Bilbo, you were a fool; you walked right in and put your foot in it.’ “

That is how I felt the last time I took a job in an office building. The income I have right now isn’t steady, so I really need to take whatever is offered me. But, well, I’m faced with the conflict Frodo had when deciding to accept the Ring. Do I stay home and comfortably fall into ruin? Or do I let my life be destroyed by doing the right thing?

Everyone has to deal with indecision in their lives, and the people of Middle-earth were no different. But the members of the Fellowship nearly always chose correctly, and I’m really, really afraid that I won’t. 

Easter in Middle-earth

I really wanted to do an Easter post on Easter, but obviously that didn’t happen. But its still Easter week, so it still counts!

This year is very interesting, because it is believed that we actually celebrated Easter on the real day Jesus rose from the dead. Supposedly He died on the exact day He was conceived: March 25. The Feast of the Annunciation. Now I hear all this talk about we don’t really know when He died, or when He was conceived, or when He was born, because there are no dates in the Bible, but I think if we have a God-inspired Bible telling us everything else, we probably know those dates for a reason.

And March 25 is a very important day in Middle-earth as well. It’s the day the Ring was destroyed in Mount Doom, and Sauron’s reign was ended. Tolkien always said he didn’t mean to put Catholic analogies in his book, and I believe him, but I also say he was clearly writing under the influence of his religion. Otherwise, it is strange coincidence that the Fellowship set out from Rivendell on December 25, and that Galadriel is called the Lady of Light, which is a name for the Blessed Mother, and that the coming of age year for Hobbits (33) is the year Jesus died.

There are other significant Middle-earth events that happened this day as well. Gandalf and Thorin met in Bree, and that’s how the events of The Hobbit were set in motion, Frodo and his friends returned to the Shire after their journey, and Sam’s daughter Elanor was born.

But the most remarkable thing of course was that the day evil was destroyed in Middle-earth was the very day that the gates of Heaven were reopened for mankind.

I hope you all have a blessed and happy Easter season.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Movie Review

At first I was going to do a book review, but that seems like an enormous task with too few faults. So this is…more of a comparison between the two.

Oh, and this will be of the extended version because I haven’t seen any other kind. I was a toddler when these movies came out, which is a good thing, or I would have torn my hair out waiting for the next one.

There are spoilers here obviously, but I’m not going to give that warning in the future unless the movie is less than a year old. Because if you haven’t seen it yet, you don’t care enough, or you’ll forget the spoiler by the time you do see it.

I now give you…a review of The Fellowship of the Ring movie.

We open with Galadriel recounting how the Ring came into being, and briefly recapping how it got to Bilbo. 

It was good, but a little more violent than I remember the book opening.

But that’s okay, because it made me that much more excited when I saw Bilbo in the Shire, and heard the music that my mother had listened to ever since the soundtracks came out!

I have a cool mom.

Battle of the Best: An LOTR Elimination Game

I found the idea for this on Olive These Words, where he did it with Disney Princesses. And I used to play this sort of game with my friends, too, where we all voted for who would win. But…no one ever voted for the people I wanted them to vote for (isn’t it annoying how politics work like that?), so now I’m doing it all by myself!

It was difficult to decide who to pick for this battle, because the idea of any of these characters fighting each other absolutely breaks my heart, buuuut, I finally decided to pick some of the mortal men. Because really, in a fight to the death, the outcome with a Wizard or an Elf involved is pretty predictable.

And the nominees are: Aragorn, Faramir, Boromir, Eomer, Theoden, Beren, Turin, and Bard. No villains, because I don’t like working with villains.

Aragorn v. Faramir: Well, we never see Aragorn actually lead an army, besides the undead one, of course. But based on all the leadership skills he showed with the Fellowship, as well as the fact that he was an incredible king, I think his proficiency in that area matches any son of Denethor. And as for Faramir, though his father had issues with the way he was protecting Gondor, everyone else thought he was great. But he did lose Osgiliath to the Orcs, and received an arrow wound that put him out of action until the Ring was destroyed. I know it could happen to anyone, but, well, it didn’t happen to Aragorn!

A Star Shines on the Hour of Our Meeting

Hello world! My name is Violetta Echo, and I’m so excited to finally be starting this literary journey of spouting off on pretty much any topic of interest I so choose.

I’m a ranter; when I get into something I get really into it. The Lord of the Rings took over my life at 11 years old, and nothing will get me more heated than an argument against it. Since then it’s either been I love something with my whole being, or I despise the very air it breathes.  And so the main reason I have started this blog is to rant to an audience that gets me.

My other passions, Pixar and acting, may seem to have nothing to do with LOTR, but my goal is to show how they all connect so it really isn’t random at all, but merely organized chaos. Yes, even in the seemingly counterproductive “Corner of Randomness.” That’s the home for everything not related with my three passions, but will be about whatever passing thing I happen to feel strongly about at the time. I hope to connect with those who are equally passionate, probably not in all my areas, but in at least one of them.

And there you have it. I will be posting twice a week, hopefully, every Tuesday and Thursday. First an LOTR themed post, then a Pixar post, then acting, and finally something completely different.

And yes, I know that this probably will branch out in ways I’ve never thought of, because that’s how creative writing works. I’m glad it works that way, too, because I’m not sure I could love Frodo as much as I do now if Tolkien had actually stuck with Bingo. So bear with me as the promises I’m making now will inevitably not be kept. Nothing ever goes the way I think it will. But that makes it that much more exciting!