and then i went on a lord of the rings binge.

the more i get into this blog challenge, the more nerdy i'm becoming.

let me rephrase that.

i'm not becoming nerdy.

i'm just writing about my nerdiness, and thus displaying it to the general public.

i blogged about being proud to be a hufflepuff. and i mentioned sitting on my bed and thinking about horcruxes.

i watch the lion king twice a day.

and i'm going to see the avengers again. for a third time. next week. yesterday i admitted that i have a thing for awkward genius doctors.

I'M NERDY. I'M ANNOUNCING THIS IN PUBLIC. on a blog. yeah.

okay okay okay so now i'm blogging about lord of the rings.

some stuff.

1. I JUST REALLY LOVE HARRY POTTER
2. i have never read lord of the rings.
3. i tried. i fell asleep. in moria. it was that ugly.
4. i'm going to try over the summer. but i probably won't get that far.
5. I JUST REALLY LOVE THE MOVIES
6. why the HELL did elijah wood not get an oscar for his performance in return of the king. somebody? anybody? i need to know this.

i was ten when the fellowship came out. eleven for the two towers, twelve for return of the king.

PG13 for... thematic violence. probably some other stuff. i'm too lazy to look up why it's rated the way it is.

but my entire family has read all of the books and my brother plowed his way with the silmarillion when he was like... nine. that kid is a beast. so of course we went to go see the movies.

i hated them.

the first one was scary. i was ten and there was a cave troll.

the second one was boring. seriously, it took that long to get to helm's deep? seriously. i'm eleven. give me something here.


return of the king. i was dreading seeing this in theatres. aaron had warned me about the giant spider. it was awful. when i was twelve, i had paralyzing arachnophobia.

and then it had like... EIGHT ENDINGS. when would the fuggin' movie end? i was sooo bored in the theatre, just waiting for it to end.

"oh it's gonna end, the screen is black! it's almost here! ahhh damnit, it's another scene..."

then i got older and worldlier.

meaning when i was like, fourteen my brother popped in the fellowship of the ring and i watched it with him. and suddenly i could appreciate the story. mostly for the violence.

i'm not a violent person. but to this day, my favorite parts of that movie are frodo getting skewered on weathertop, and then moria.

BALROG PARTY TIME.

then i liked the two towers for helm's deep. because it's a bunch of orcs (or are they urukai? did i spell that right?) climbing a wall and slaughtering elves and getting slaughtered in return.

and then my brother had two towers extended and it was awesome. oh, and treebeard is awesome, i like treebeard. he's pretty tight.

release the rivaaaaaaahhhhh

then i went through that tiny phase where i thought that legolas was hot. didn't we all have that phase? even the men? yeah? maybe? sure.

i didn't like return of the king. i hated the beginning. i can't stand smeagol strangling deagol. it's the music. and i wasn't into serial killers back then. and there was always one scene of his transformation that made him look kind of like the grinch and i couldn't take that seriously.

and then i got really into the movies. never the books, just the movies. they were cinematic master pieces.

goodness, how many times have i blogged about movies this month?!

so then i met jacob and now we've been dating for like... a year and nine months or something. and he likes lord of the rings like i like harry potter.

now i'm not picky about movies, or books for that matter. if i want to read the chamber of secrets, i'll read it. if i want to watch the two towers, i'll watch it.

jacob: SCANDALOUS. THIS IS SUCH A HEINOUS CRIME. WE WATCH THEM IN ORDER. WE READ THEM IN ORDER. by the way we're seeing the hobbit at midnight, don't care if you have a class at eight thirty, just sayin'.
me: i want to watch return of the king.
jacob: NO WE WILL WATCH THE OTHER TWO FIRST.

suddenly in high school i got into this huge return of the king phase. my junior year i watched it on my computer like, every night. i'd only watch the best parts, and i'd watch them over and over and over. jacob thinks this is a crime against humanity. one cannot simply skip parts of the movie.

see what i did there?

so i went back through my junior year of high school journal the other day and every other day is like, one in the morning comes really fast when you're watching lord of the rings. i could use some coffee. i hope obama wins the election.


yeah. then i put the movies aside for a while.

then jacob and i had our extended marathon. we couldn't actually do it. we broke it up. this was last august. and i realized that extended was the only way to go.

i only had the two towers extended. #firstworldproblems.

so i've touched on this earlier, but i had another lord of the rings binge about a month ago. during ACCL week i just really needed the one ring to be destroyed. i just... it needed to happen.

and then dave, jacob's fraternity brother, was like, oh hey i have all of the extended versions at the PMA house, wanna come over and finish the fellowship with me?

so we finished the fellowship and i was like, um can i have those.

and suddenly it was return of the king every night.

and i live tweeted.

normally live tweeting is a thing i reserve for criminal minds, but suddenly this kind of thing was happening.

@emilyyxh: oh hang on, lemme just carry my BFF up this ACTIVE VOLCANO. #lordoftherings
@emilyyxh: frodo that's a spider! run! #lordoftherings
@emilyyxh: i am no man. FEMINISM! #lordoftherings
@emilyyxh: merry, one does not simply stab the witch king. #lordoftherings

you get the point.

i lost a lot of followers. but mordor began to follow me. and i was in the top twenty tweets for the #lordoftherings hashtag. yeahhh buddy!

i added "lordoftherings" to my phone dictionary. i'd already added "criminalminds". you know.

so during this binge i'm watching dave's extended versions. i did watch the other two, but return of the king was like... every night. for two weeks.

so then jacob comes back from his break while i'm at ACCL and i'm like, oh hey let's watch return of the king


and he's like, BLASPHEMY YOU'RE SUCH A HEATHEN WHERE'S THE FELLOWSHIP

and i'm like, ugh. boyfriends. so picky.

mmm. gorgeous hobbit.

i started wanting to be a hobbit. and i was like, man. frodo baggins is really hot. as a hobbit. with the ears and the curly hair and the baby face, just everything. and those EYES. those eyes. and his voice. i love his voice.

so jacob and i go through the movies one at a time. i'm just waiting for return of the king. but it's nice to watch the movies with him because he knows all of the back stories because he's read everything on the books. the histories. all of that stuff.

he told me about shelob's mom and how she sucked the light out of the world through a tree.

that's a pretty determined spider. did i spell shelob correctly? i need jacob for this kind of thing.

shelob is the spider, by the way. you know, the one that chases frodo, stabs him, and then sam is like, BITCH THAT'S MY FRIEND FIGHT FIGHT STAB STAB

yeah. shelob.

but anyway. we're going to watch return of the king in jacob's room when he's on duty. and this is the first day of the ill-fated fifteen day sinus infection that ended with snot pouring out of both of my eyes and me having a weird ear fungus. so we had to wait awhile until i could actually watch it.

that took like, two weeks. because jacob went kayaking in the wilderness with the president of our college.

so when jacob was gone i was like, OMG ACTOR COMMENTARY and they're making fun of orlando bloom and talking about him climbing cows to prepare for giant elephants. and shelob's stinger totally sent elijah wood to the hospital. oops.

and then it's like, who wasn't hospitalized during the filming of these movies? good gracious, three four hour films in three years with all of this make up and CGI and andy serkis like, drowning in a river? and nobody died?

but anyway, i just really like return of the king. frodo is a totally different person (hobbit?). sam is the best. cave trolls galore. faramir is pretty legit. gandalf is a badass. orcs and fighting and leveling cities! rohan riders plowing over stuff!

frodo destroying the ring!

he really doesn't. he wants to keep it. he has no intention of destroying it. he destroys it trying to take it for himself. so yeah, he's not the best hero.

i'm still trying to figure out how he hung onto that cliff. because at the angle he was falling, it just doesn't make sense.

and another thing, i really believe that he wanted to let go. you can see it in his eyes. and later, when he's returned to the shire and he's left over half of himself in mordor, i think part of him still wishes that he'd let go.

i don't really blame him.

but i guess that return of the king is kind of my go-to movie. in fact, i'm watching right now, and the ring was JUST destroyed. sauron's tower is falling! he needs some eyedrops.

now that the ring is destroyed, i only have about eight endings to get through.

yep. only about eight.

i don't think aragorn is attractive.
frodo is where it's at, kids.

oops. mount doom just exploded while i was finding that picture on google.

you know, that had to have been terrifying for frodo and sam.

"we destroyed the ring! yay! OH SHIT THAT'S A LAVA WAVE RUUUUUUUUUN"

i'm just going to end this post with that idea. peace out, kids.




post script: i also have this idea that some riders from rohan go to the rohan camp after they had already left. and they were left there saying, "man, we just missed out on the battle for middle earth. damnit."

i think i'm the only one who thinks of these things.