(no subject)

[darcydodo]

I'm back from the UCCE retreat. It was an absolutely fantastic weekend, if not nearly long enough; yesterday (Saturday) was incredibly hot, so the ice-cold water was great for running in, and today was really foggy, so that it didn't matter that we had no time to go down to the beach. Last night leech and I walked along the beach with some other people and watched as it got foggier and foggier. Today was so foggy that, driving back, the tops of the posts on the Golden Gate Bridge were invisible.

The talent show was very amusing, as we were required to do skits in our groups, each group being given a set of characters and a context. We were originally given the characters of "rock stars" and the scenario of "Moulin Rouge," but there was the slight problem that, being a madrigal group and generally not living in the 21st century, we couldn't think of almost any rock stars. So, given that we have the UCCE president in our group, we cheated and gave ourselves a different set of characters. It was: Lord of the Rings!

So we took snippets of songs from Moulin Rouge and applied them to the LotR characters. This resulted in songs such as "There was a ring; a very strange, enchanted ring..." and "One day I'll sail away..." (sung by Arwen). I played Aragorn to leech's Arwen, and I sang:

Arwen, you don't have to sail to the far shore.
These days are over; you don't have to be immortal anymore.

When Gandalf died, we all sang:

The quest must go on
The quest must go on
Inside our hearts are achin'
Gandalf may be taken
But our quest still goes on

words to both those by yours truly. leech wrote words to the other songs we did... except for "Come What May," which was sung by Frodo and Sam with no change at all in the words. Yes. Gay hobbits on special delivery by Perfect Fifth. And I got to have manly stubble. But still not king.

Comments

[girlwithjournal.livejournal.com]

Oh my God. That's the funniest thing ever. I can't wait for nenar and dizzyditz to see this.

[wychwood]

Brilliant. Sounds like totally insane fun, so life is going as normal, then?

The stubble thing reminds me ask whether you ever saw Jeannie's beard? It was black. She wore it to Freshers' Fair, too...

[tzeentch.livejournal.com]

Damn it! Why couldn't I have been there???? That's so awesome.

[darcydodo]

And if you'd just come for Sunday you would've seen it.... :)

[tzeentch.livejournal.com]

Grrrr. Don't rub it in. I spent sunday cleaning up leaves in the back yard and doing homework. :(

[grimhild.livejournal.com]

Hey, mon. Finally got around to adding you. Just thought you should know.

[darcydodo]

Dude. Cool. ;)

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

Sounds entertaining. *points in the direction of ixwin's LOTR/Once More With Feeling (BTVS) crossover.

Also on a rant, will the shippers leave Sam and Frodo alone please? Any other combination is fine (and Legolas/Gimli is almost certain), but I think that to add Frodo/Sam to the book cheapens their relationship and the film was certainly played (and I quote the actor playing Sam) "Without the element of Eros"

[liv]

will the shippers leave Sam and Frodo alone please
Frodo/Sam is practically in the pshat! And why should a relationship that includes a sexual dimension necessarily be 'cheaper'? That's just puritanism in disguise.

[darcydodo]

Thank you... so much....

[darcydodo]

Look. When I read the books, I was startled at the end when Sam got married. I was absolutely convinced that he was in love with Frodo. And I don't care what Sean Astin says about how the film was played, even if he was in "The Goonies."

On the subject of LotR/OMWF, girlwithjournal already did a crossover set of lyrics that I'm quite happy with. Last year.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I'd say Sean Astin is probably the third highest authority on Sam out there, having had to get his mind into the part (the first and second being J.R.R. and Christopher Tolkien, and as J.R.R's notes talk about Aragorn being a hobbit called Trotter...)

As for Sam getting married to Rosie, what lead to it?
I can think of only a few scenarios if Frodo and Sam were in love as you say.

The first is that J.R.R. Tolkien wanted to not give impressions. With Gimli and Legolas around, I think we can discount that, and the camera could be easily and discretely shifted onto Merry or Pippin pre-grey havens.

The second is to save Frodo's reputation in The Shire. I don't think the Frodo of "The Scouring of the Shire" would care too much what anyone thought other than Sam and possibly Merry and Pippin. He had seen too much and was too tired to be bothered by this- I think we can dismiss it.

The third is to save Sam's reputation. Again, I think that Sam cared more for Frodo than for his reputation and, like Frodo, had seen too much to care. Besides there is textual evidence against this, with Sam being happy that Rosie was impressed.

As an addendum on the reputation issue, they would both have been IMO too exotic and fey for anything else they did to substantially affect their reputation.

A tweak on these is that Frodo told Sam to court Rosie to save his reputation. I don't see this, and don't see Sam going along with this, Sam probably being the strongest willed character in the books and certainly capable of doing what Frodo needs rather than what he wants (c.f. The Breaking of the Fellowship).

There is the possibility Rosie was chasing Sam, but I think it silly to believe that Sam could be easily caught (at least until after the Grey Havens) if your theory is accurate. Also the text does not bear that out.

This leaves very few options. The only ones I can think of are that it was an arranged marriage (which I find extremely unlikely), that Sam dumped Frodo for Rosie (yeah, right!) or that there was an unwritten line which Frodo and Sam would not cross.

This last I find the only viable hypothesis. I also think that part of the reason for including Rosie Cotton in the book was to emphasise the Sam/Frodo relationship being asexual. Also if the relationship had been sexual, then either Sam would be betraying Frodo (and possibly two-timing Rosie), or it would be long over- and I certainly see no textual evidence for them breaking up.

When you are surprised, go back and reexamine why you are surprised. I think that in this case it is because you misinterpreted the relationship.

[leech.livejournal.com]

It was a parody.