Promiseland

[Fetian]

Anyway once again he's fucking right: people are going to do that and it's going to suck

[Fetian]

I've been on a Tolkien kick for a week or so, because I actually really like his worldbuilding, I'm just not a fan of his writing and/or of Lord of the Rings in specific. So I've been reading the Silmarillion (slowly) and I found a podcast that's not "let's re-read the Lord of the Rings and do a chapter-by-chapter live-react". And I'm watching the Lord of the Rings movies for the first time since roughly when they came out

I was a big fan of The Hobbit when I was younger, but when I tried reading Lord of the Rings in high school I just couldn't get into it, and when I watched the movies I fell asleep every time. Including in the theater when the first one premiered. I'm watching the extended cuts now, and I don't know if I just needed more movie, or if I needed to already be familiar with The Lore, or if I just needed to be 35 and not a teenager, but I'm actually enjoying it! I may give reading the books themselves another shot, too.

I do suspect it's the middle one, because I'm getting a lot of mileage out of things happening and being like "Oh I know what that means!" or "Oh I know who that is!" or "Oh I know where that comes from!" and so on.

My biggest takeaway so far is that I love Boromir? He's such a great character, and genuinely the most human (heh) and sympathetic of the Fellowship. I did not expect him to be so kind, I really expected him to just be kind of a dick. I do think I gather that they made some changes in his character for the movie, that possibly he is more of just-kind-of-a-dick in the books? If so I approve of the change and will be sad to meet book-him if I do get around to trying to read 1200 Pages of Walking.

I also might try reading some Tolkien that isn't Lord of the Rings (and aside from the Silmarillion), it had never occurred to me that he'd written not-Middle-Earth stuff but apparently he was pretty prolific? And since I liked the Hobbit, maybe I'd like more of the stuff he wrote aimed more toward kids, or maybe I'd like more of his contained, less-epic faire. Or stuff that is less straight-up fantasy.

Back to the movie, I do am enjoying how ... sincere? It is? They're doing a larger-than-life sort of thing with characters' emotions, and it comes across as corny at parts but also really works, and they don't let actors do that in movies very much anymore. There's a lot of good stuff in how they made this that you don't see much in movies anymore, despite movies spending a few years aping other parts of this series and just kind of getting it wrong. Truly this was a labor of love and it really shows, for better or for worse.

[Fetian]

It's melodramatic in ways that people will and do make fun of, that people are afraid to let their art be, but that's part of what makes it so good.

[Fetian]

Also I have spent the entire four-hour movie with They're Taking The Hobbits to Isengard stuck in my head

They use this fucking motif constantly

[Fetian]

Love to buy necessities and immediately get hit by anxiety that I can't actually afford it and that I've screwed myself for the month

[Sorcyress]

and rearranged some power cables to put the space heater and the SAD lamp on a timer, so they'll turn on automatically in the morning and hopefully stop me from sleeping until

FWIW, when we were in broken-furnace-hell, I had about eight different people remind me that you're supposed to only plug space heaters directly into the wall because of fire risk? So, officially being a person for that for you I guess.

(I really wanted to do a timer'd space heater to help me wake up into warm space and not coldroom but it was not to be).

---

The LotR commentary is interesting, and I come from a similar place (although I did make it through the movies as a kid). Tuesday's dad is a genuine Tolkien academic (like, gives talks to other academics and created a giant database/website to search and index different versions of different drafts and stuff) so it's been interesting to get little bits and pieces of LotR in my brain from that. Maybe I should try them again sometime, but given how hard I bounced off Dune when I read that (admittedly a decade ago) I think I just don't like dense giant genre books and would prefer light and fluffy and easy to read genre books.

-Sor

[Fetian]

FWIW, when we were in broken-furnace-hell, I had about eight different people remind me that you're supposed to only plug space heaters directly into the wall because of fire risk? So, officially being a person for that for you I guess.

(I really wanted to do a timer'd space heater to help me wake up into warm space and not coldroom but it was not to be).

It's safe if your power strip isn't damaged and you're not overloading it with other things plus the heater

The LotR commentary is interesting, and I come from a similar place (although I did make it through the movies as a kid). Tuesday's dad is a genuine Tolkien academic (like, gives talks to other academics and created a giant database/website to search and index different versions of different drafts and stuff) so it's been interesting to get little bits and pieces of LotR in my brain from that. Maybe I should try them again sometime, but given how hard I bounced off Dune when I read that (admittedly a decade ago) I think I just don't like dense giant genre books and would prefer light and fluffy and easy to read genre books.

-Sor

I also bounced off Dune when I was in high school, but I know at least some if not all of that was because I don't actually like pure sci fi. I at the time also didn't like pure fantasy but maybe my tastes there have changed!

One of the podcasts I found is by a 'tolkien professor', but I haven't tried it in earnest yet because the first episodes are low quality and I've been enjoying binging the other podcast I found

[Fetian]

Successfully awake and up at a reasonable time!

[Fetian]

The person who is the reason I saw that ^ reblogged this v and oh my god

Screenshot_2022-12-06.png

oh my god

are you fucking serious

[Fetian]

It's safe if your power strip isn't damaged and you're not overloading it with other things plus the heater

To go into more detail (now that I'm more awake): The danger is that your space heater will pull enough amperage that the copper wiring inside the power strip (or extension cord) will overheat and start a fire. So either your space heater pulls more power than the strip is rated for, or the wiring in the strip is faulty or cheap. If you check the rating on the power strip and make sure everything plugged into it falls below its ratings, then you should be fine. But that's not memorable enough to spread as a safety warning (and frankly people who see a lot of house fires are naturally going to be inclined to be overcautious and often just recommend against using space heaters at all)

My power strip is rated for 15 amps and my space heater for a little over 9, and the lamp is rated in milliamps