I'll be there if you need me... except for right now *poof*

My parents let me believe in Santa til I was about 3, So I can't even remember those Christmases, but I've been told they were perfectly pleasant.

So...yeah.

This.THIS.THISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHIS!!

Holy shit yes!

Heh, all the files for the thing I'm writing right now are all named as "Unnamed Miniseries".

But otherwise, yeah, I'm pretty much the same way.

The only thing I can really think of that I named fairly early on in the Process was Lily In The Wind. And that was mostly because I needed to have a name because our mentors told us we had to.

Oh my gods, Hug Hugo Weaving Day sounds like the best event ever!!

So having had a day to think about it, my opinion still hasn't changed but I think I can put into words some of what I was trying to convey better now.

SO I've only rerally read aboput the first 2/3rds of The Hobbit book, and there's a couple things I think I need to address. I can understand where people who shield themselves behind the claim of "But it's a childrens book!!" are coming from, and I still call it bullshit. THe thing about the Hobbit is that it's told fromt he point of view of a narrator who already knows that everything is going to be fine, in fact there's almost an aire of nostalgic whimsy about the way the story is told. BUt the thing is, you look at the actual bare bones plot points and story of the Hobbit, and you look at it through the eyes of what the Universe of Middle Earth is actually like (Namely through the eyes of the Lord of The Rings), and you begin to realize just how FUCKING terrifying everything that's happening is.
For example, and the one that really stuck with me after coming out of the movie is the entire Goblin sequence. So we have gotten an idea of what Goblins are from the Lord Of The Rings, they are pretty fucking terrifying.

Smile pretty for the camera. (Which btw, look absolutely nothing like the Goblins of the Hobbit. Call me crazy but an entire race doesn't go from that /\ to the staypuft marshmallow man in 60 years, magic or not)

They are a race distinctly known for being great at designing and building all sorts of mechanical devices, namely, torture devices. Really really good, torture devices. So we have our entire gang of heroes, trapped in the underground lair of a race of beings known for being awesome at toture devices, calling out for thier best and most horrible torture devices to be brought out and used on our heroes.

Fucking.

Terrifying.

The problem is that the movie decided to take the point of view of our narrator freind back there that knows everything is alright and is actually kinda missing those days of excitement and danger instead of actually living in the real Middle Earth and showing us what actually happened.

This. Does. Not. Make. For. Good. Movie.

And before everyone starts screaming at me me "But oh, that's what the book was so they had to do it like that! Wha." Shut the fuck up.

No they god damn well didn't, and you know it. Jackson has shown us that he was perfectly willing to mess with the structure of the book and rip it apart and assemble it back together into something else. He also went into this project in the complete knowledge that this movie was going to have to fit into the Lord of The Rings canon.

HE COULD HAVE FUCKING FIXED THE BOOK. This is not a new concept, DiF mentions it often, a movie needs to be able to stand on it's own apart from the book, and with the Hobbit, doubley so since it also needs to fit together with the already established universe of Lord of the Rings.

It wouldn't have been that hard, all he would have had to do was treat it with the same sense of reality and world building that he did with Lord of The Rings. But instead he chose to sit back on his laurels and "do the book".

And that is my major issue with The Hobbit. It feels lazy and Jackson feels like a wimp. It's as though he cared so little about the universe he had built that when it came time to build more into it, he didn't have the balls to go, "No, the tone of the book is wrong for the movies I need to make and for the universe that has been built, and I need to fix this."

(If you wanna get a little depressed, imagine the entire Goblin sequence set in a Mines of Moria type setting, The Goblins (The real ones, the fucking terrifying ones, not the staypuft marshmallow ones) are crawling over the rocks hissing and spitting thier song out as the giant creaking sounds of some unknown torture devices is beings wheeled in as our heroes are tied helpless at the base of a giant throne, the Goblin King surveying the scene with a bemused and evil smile.... then imagine the entire movie like that. Goddammit that would have been amazing.)

(*Yes, I know Orcs and Goblins mean the same thing in the Tolkein-verse, substitute where necessary to placate your conscience)

An amazing talk by John Green about the power of the internet as a medium for community and learning.

Hansen, you give me hope that I'm gonna love this shit out of this thing. I'm very much all of this:

Gonna try and get out to it tomorrow, since it's my one day off between now and the new year.

Maybe it's just me, but anytime there's that many voices singing acapella at once I get chills.

I loved that so hard.

Ah yes... the best plan for doing something that our brains do pretty well on their own (namely control 4 limbs at one time) is too make 2 people have to do it all together!! That'll work! And as we all know... 2 pairs of eyes are better than 1, especially when they are both in the same room with access to the exact same information as each other.

Now if you had a pair of eyes outside the frickin thing maybe that arguement could hold some weight... but what on earth could 2 pilots do that 1 pilot couldn't??

I'm losing faith in this movie fast.