December 11
The snow was still coming down when I woke up—if there hadn't been all the lights in the parking lot I wouldn't have seen it, 'cause the light from the Christmas Tree would have blocked it out, but I could see orangish flakes out the front window of the apartment and then when I got out of bed and went over to the balcony window and pushed my muzzle up against the glass I could see the snow, until my breath fogged up the glass.
I wasn't sure how deep it was or would get—it was drifted high enough against my window to be at my barrel, but it looked like it wasn't really as deep as it was on the balcony and I decided that I wanted to check, so I turned off the alarm and tried to get the door open. It was really stiff and didn't want to move at all and I had trouble getting any leverage on it at all. I wish that it had a rope around the handle so that I could pull on that, 'cause that would make it a whole lot easier to open.
B & G Outlet in Schoolcraft had lots of rope and it probably wasn't worth taking a trip all the way down there for a couple of feet of it, but since Aric shopped there a lot he probably had some that I could borrow.
I got the door open a crack but it wasn't enough to get a hoof in there and really force it, and I was still struggling with it when the cold air woke Aric and Meghan up. Neither of them got up to help me right away, though; they just huddled together and Meghan pulled the blankets over them, while I looked around the apartment to see if there was anything I could use to pry the door some more.
Finally Aric rolled on his back and saw what I was doing and he told me that I was crazy, and I said that I wanted to go out and see, so he got up and pulled the door open far enough for me to get out on the balcony and then closed it again to keep the cold air and snow out of the apartment.
I determined that it was mostly drifts on my balcony, and then I decided I was gonna fly over top of the building to see how much had fallen overnight—I'd be able to tell how much new snow was on Winston—and then come back inside and we could have sex and then take a shower and make breakfast and start watching the movies.
So I went over the roof and I didn't land on the other side, 'cause I knew Winston pretty well, and I could see that there were a couple of inches of snow piled on top of it. And then I stayed up there a little bit longer, because there was a truck that was just like Winston except that it had a big snow-blade on the front and a blinking orange light and it was shoving the snow out of the way and up against the snow mountains. They were too tall for that truck to have made them all, so I thought that probably a bucket tractor like the ones that worked in dirt mines came along and picked up the truck's little snowpiles and put them on the big pile, or else they had some kind of conveyor that they brought in.
I flew back to my side of the roof and Aric had turned on my P so I knew right where to land, and he'd laid back down so I had to tap on the glass to get his attention, and then he sat up and looked at me and said something to Meghan and she shook her head. I couldn't hear what they'd said, but whatever it was she sat up and watched out the window too as he came over and then he stuck his butt up against the glass and bent over, and after he was sure I'd gotten a good look, he straightened up and pulled open the door for me.
He said that that was called a pressed ham, and Meghan said that it was kind of insulting, but I thought it was sort of funny, especially since he was trying to rub the cold off his butt. And then I stuck my muzzle between his legs and made him jump, 'cause my snout was really cold even though I hadn't been outside for all that long.
Aric said that I was being mean, and I said that he'd had fun with the ice cubes and he said it wasn't the same thing.
Meghan said that I couldn't get back in bed until I'd brushed all the snow off my back, so I went into the bathroom and shook off and then she came in and helped get what I hadn't, and the two of us went back to bed and Aric had recovered from me frosting his balls, but he wouldn't let me put my head down there until he'd felt and made sure that my muzzle had warmed up.
After, the three of us took a shower together and then me and Meghan went into the kitchen to make breakfast, and Aric was kinda mad that Meghan said that we shouldn't start watching the movie until we were done eating, but then he decided that he'd wash the dishes to speed things along, and so that gave me and Meghan a little time to relax when we were done eating.
We left the mattress on the floor so that we could lie on it, and then Meghan decided that we should pull the futon frame close so that they'd have something to lean up against if they wanted to, 'cause she wasn't sure that she wanted to watch all the movies lying down.
Then Aric put the first movie record in and he had to adjust the volume a little bit so it was loud enough that we wouldn't miss anything but not loud enough to hurt my ears or wake up people downstairs.
He said that he should have brought the sound system that they had at his house with him but it was a lot of work to unhook and it was David's anyways.
While he was doing that, Meghan got up and put on a sweatshirt, 'cause she wanted to start out sitting and didn't want her breasts to get cold, and I couldn't cover both of them by leaning my head against her.
The movie started out with a war, and I learned about the rings, and then how one of them had gone to the Shire which looked like a really nice place to live. And Gandalf found out that Bilbo's ring was bad, and said that Frodo should destroy it, which I thought was pretty sensible, but when Gandalf went to get Saruman's help, he got imprisoned instead, because Saruman was really bad.
I thought it was pretty neat that the pub in Bree was called The Prancing Pony, and thought that after the first movie was over I was gonna stretch my legs by prancing around the living room. And they met Strider there, who was actually called Aragorn and was a good person who wanted to help them and later on he helped them fight off Ringwraiths.
Gandalf got free by talking to a moth and being carried away by a giant eagle, and then they all met in Rivendell and made a fellowship of traveling partners. And they tried to get over the mountains but it was too snowy, and Aric said that maybe he could open the balcony door to get some more atmosphere in the apartment. I wouldn't have minded if he had, but Meghan was against the idea.
So they decided to go through the mountain instead which I thought was a really dumb idea, and I was right. They had to fight a troll and then a Balrog, and Gandalf fell and the rest of them barely escaped.
And they got to Lothlórien, then set off down a river and Gimli got three hairs from Galadriel as a gift, but Boromir started to get corrupted by the ring and Frodo thought he might try to take it and wanted to go on his own, and then everyone who was left got attacked by Uruk-hai, and Merry and Pippin got captured and Boromir was killed, but I was proud of him 'cause he died trying to defend the hobbits.
I had a lot of questions about the movie and Aric wouldn't answer the ones that got answered in the next movies, but he did tell me that the whole story was made-up and none of it had ever really happened, and that there weren't any of the monsters that had appeared in the movie, either, which was kind of reassuring. And then he told me a little bit about how they'd made it and said that the movies had all sorts of special features about how they'd made it which were all really interesting but he didn't want to show them just yet because they kind of took some of the magic out of it.
When I watched too many movies, my eyes started to hurt a little bit, and Meghan said that the best way to complete our marathon was to take breaks between the movies, and Aric thought so, too, so he got out from under the covers and started to walk around and Meghan grabbed onto the futon frame and twisted around to make her back crack, then she got up too and said that maybe we should have lunch.
Well, I was kinda hungry and I was also stiff from sitting, so I said that I could fly around a little bit unless they wanted to get dressed and go outside and play, and Aric said that he had hoped to stay naked all day long because he didn't get to do that very much, and that next year he was going to spend a whole weekend at Sunny Haven, and he said that she should come with him, and Meghan said that she might, which made Aric really happy. It was kind of sad for me, though, 'cause I would have liked to go, too.
Then Meghan asked if I knew if any people who were students in Equestria had given up on clothes while they were there and I said that I didn't know for sure. I didn't think that anypony would mind. And I thought about how Gusty had decided that she should wear clothes, so I thought that surely there were some exchange students in Equestria who decided that they didn't have to wear any.
Aric made sandwiches for lunch and I stuffed a lot of hay in mine, then after I'd eaten it I had him open the balcony door for me so I could take a quick flight around, and I asked them if I should get some donuts 'cause Sweetwater's wasn't very far. And Meghan said that that might make a good snack for the next movie and balance out the popcorn, so she helped me put on my saddlebags and I thought about putting on my flight gear, too, but decided I'd stay really low instead.
So I flew out and it was still snowing, and it had gotten heavier. There were at least four inches on Winston now, and the parking lots were covered in snow again, so I guess the snow-pushing truck was somewhere else.
I flew over to the railroad tracks and went under the 131 Highway bridge, and then followed the tracks until they got to 9th Avenue and turned around, and I went back past my apartments to Sweetwater's and got three cinnamon rolls. They were a little confused that I'd gone to the car window, 'cause I guess if you were on hoof you were supposed to go inside, but they did give me the donuts through the little window and the woman there was nice enough to lean out and put them in my saddlebags for me, and then I flew back to my balcony and I had to knock on the window until I saw Aric, and then when he started walking over I turned around and lifted my tail and then pressed my rump right against the glass.
Nobody wanted to eat the donuts right away, so Meghan put them on the kitchen counter for later and then she went into the bathroom with me to brush off all the new snow I'd gotten on me, and she took off her sweatshirt and put it on me so I wouldn't be as cold (I wasn't, but it was really nice of her to do), and we all sat back down together and Aric started the second movie.
At first it was really suspenseful, 'cause we didn't know if Merry and Pippin were still alive and thought that Gandalf was Saruman and I thought that Gollum was going to betray Frodo and Samwise. But he didn't right away—he could have in the Dead Marshes and didn't. And the other hobbits met Ents which were big trees that could talk and walk around, and they wanted to help the hobbits but kind of went about it stupidly and slowly, and Gandalf, Aragorn, and Gimli saved Theoden King and banished Wormtongue which was smart of them. And then they went to Helm's Deep which wasn't so smart, and Aragorn fell but his horse was smart and took him to Helm's Deep, too.
I was curious about Shadowfax, too, and I kept waiting for him to rally all the other horses to him or for one of the Rohirrim to notice that he was lord of all horses but they never did, or else they never said anything about it, and none of the other horses ever knelt down to him, which was kind of odd, but maybe human horses showed respect differently.
And I thought it was going to be all over for them because they were trapped in Helm's Deep with no way out, and then Aragorn told Theoden to ride out and when Gimli blew the Horn of Helm Hammerhand it made my coat stand on end, and then Gandalf and the Riders of Rohirrim arrived and overrode the Uruk-Hai, and the Ents finished off everyone who had survived.
So I told Aric that that was proof that Equines were better than humans and Meghan said she'd known that for years. And he said that it was a historical fact that it was very hard to stop a charge of heavy horses and told me about the time he'd been on the field with actual jousters and they'd been riding horses as big as the draft horses I'd seen at the Pavilion and they were at a full gallop.
He said that he'd felt the ground shake under his feet and he was a hundred feet away from them and that was when he realized how terrifying it must have been to have cavalry coming towards you. And I said that before the tribes were unified, pegasuses had learned that fighting earth ponies on the ground was dumb, 'cause when they charged you couldn't stop them at all, and when they overran your position you probably wouldn't even have time to get into the air. And I said that I thought that if things had gone a little bit differently and the earth ponies and the unicorns had banded together then there might not be pegasuses any more. Which was something that wasn't pleasant to think about but it was probably true.
Meghan hugged me and said that she was glad things had turned out the way that they had.
It was almost dinner time—it was strange how fast the day had passed while we were watching the movies, and there was still one more to go, which was also the longest one, Aric said.
I wanted to stretch out and Meghan did, too, so she put on pants and her sweatshirt again (I'd taken it off after I'd warmed up) and the two of us went outside and played around in the snow for a little bit. Aric stayed in the apartment 'cause he said that he was going to take care of dinner.
Me and Meghan both thought that meant that he was going to order pizzas, and she wondered if he was going to put on clothes before they got delivered or just surprise the pizza person.
I thought he might not and just lean around the door, and then she decided that if we saw a pizza delivery driver we should get the pizzas and then we could hide them from him somehow. I thought that was kind of mean, but it would be funny and it would confuse him.
Well, we were right that he had, 'cause after we'd been outside playing for a little over a half hour, a Dodge Caliber with a Domino's sign on its roof arrived and a girl got out and it was someone that we both sort of knew from Kalamazoo College called Jessie.
Aric had already paid for the pizzas so we just took them and Meghan said that I should distract him and then she'd figure out how to sneak them in the apartment before they got too cold.
I thought that I could fly them up to the balcony, but they'd get cold pretty quick sitting out in the snow.
She said that he was probably looking at the app on his portable telephone that told him where the pizzas were and he was gonna be really confused when it said that they had been delivered and there were no pizzas.
So I went back upstairs and let myself into the apartment and I hadn't thought about how I might distract Aric, but it turned out he was in the bathroom and so I just let Meghan in and she put the pizzas in the oven and and I opened a can of anchovies, 'cause their smell would hide the smell of the pizza.
And it did; when he came out he was looking at his portable telephone in confusion, and me and Meghan both pretended that we didn't know and asked him where dinner was and what it was and he told us that it was supposed to be here and someone else had probably stolen it.
Then we started laughing, but we wouldn't tell him where it was and made him try and find it and it took him longer than it should have to figure out that it was in the oven.
I put the anchovies on the pizza that I was eating, 'cause I didn't want to waste them, and we all stayed in the kitchen and ate until we were full, and then went back to the living room to watch the last movie.
All the human movies I've seen so far have happy endings (I wasn't sure about Bad Santa, but Aric thought it was a happy ending), so I was kind of expecting it but then as the movie went on I was less sure, 'cause Theoden died and Denethor set himself on fire and threw himself off Minas Tirith, and I thought that Frodo had died, too, along with Eowyn and Merry and Boromir. And I was crying when the Riders went out of Minas Tirith to Osgiliath, cause it was obvious that they would die and everybody knew it but nobody stopped them. And the Mouth of Sauron was the scariest person in the whole movie, I thought, because he was so evil and I wasn't sad when he got beheaded, 'cause he'd gotten what he deserved.
I did feel bad for Gollum. He hadn't asked for the ring; it had come to him and deep down Frodo knew that he could have been Gollum, and maybe if Sam hadn't been such a good friend he would have, but he was really smart and wise and strong.
Sometimes good friends are all that keep you safe from monsters, or becoming a monster. So I nuzzled Aric and Meghan and then kissed both of them and put my wings over them to protect them.
And I thought about how sometimes even if you don't want to you have to do things to protect your herd and your tribe and sometimes it doesn't work out like you'd hoped it would. We didn't have big battles like in the movie any more but every storm we fought for the sky and sometimes ponies didn't come back.
It was almost midnight by the time that the last movie had finished and I was a little stiff and sore from sitting so long, so I wanted to fly one more time before I went to bed. So Aric got up and he pulled the door open for me and I went outside and stood on the balcony for a little bit, just looking up at the snow. It had lightened up a little bit but it was still coming down and I couldn't help but wonder if it was ever going to stop. You could see a little slump in the drift where I'd gone through before but all my hoofprints were covered up and if the snow got much deeper, the birds weren't gonna have to fly to the bird feeder; they could just walk there on top of the drifts.
There hadn't been as much last winter, but since humans couldn't control the weather I guess they got however much wanted to come down whether they liked it or not. I couldn't help but wonder if it had ever gotten so deep that people had to go out the second floor, or their cars got stuck in it and it was too deep for even the plows to push it aside.
It wasn't that deep yet. When I flew over the building, I saw a couple of parking lots down a big yellow snow-tractor was pushing snow up the piles, and doing its best to move the snow away so that the cars could still go. And even though I wasn't wearing my flight gear, I went up to the bottom of the clouds and felt that there was still more snow in them, but not so much any more.
Hopefully, Amtraks could push snow out of their way, or else I wasn't gonna be able to go to Florida.
I didn't go too far this time, 'cause it was late and I was kind of tired even though I felt like I hadn't done anything all day. After I came down from the clouds, I made a big circle over the lake behind my apartment which was still open in the center, although I didn't think it would be for much longer. I could see that the ice had moved halfway to the middle over the last day, and while it was probably a lot thinner than it looked, it wasn't going to be all that much longer before it iced over and then if I wanted to get a fish out of it, I'd have to make a hole in it and hope that one got curious and came up to where I could get him.
Probably the river was still open, 'cause with the current flowing it wouldn't ice over as easily. And thinking about that made me glad that people had so much food, so you never had to worry during the wintertime if there was gonna be enough to eat.
Even though I wasn't supposed to, I landed on the roof and once I was sure I wasn't going to slide off I rolled on my back and made a pegasus angel in the snow, and then I got back on my hooves and moved off to the side a little bit and shook as much of it off as I could before I landed back on my balcony.
Aric opened the door and let me in, and even he had trouble with it. He said that it was getting ice in its track, from the drifted snow getting compacted down and the heat from inside melting it and there wasn't really too much that we could do about that but he said that maybe tomorrow we could go get the snowbrush out of Winston and sweep some of it out.
Even after Meghan brushed me off, I was too cold to snuggle with at first, and neither of them wanted to touch me until I'd warmed up some, and then Aric complained that I'd made the blankets wet, 'cause she hadn't gotten all the snow out of my coat or my feathers. Meghan said that that was the one disadvantage to being fur-covered and said that if he went out and rolled in the snow he'd have a hard time getting it all off, too.
And I thought he was gonna do it, but he decided not to, because he was pretty comfortable and even though he was complaining about the wet spots in the blanket he didn't mind that I had my wing over his stomach.
The theatrical cuts? lame.
Too bad they couldn't spank it and make it good again.
I remember there were several blizzards in the 1800s where trains got engulfed. Not sure about now.
Well, who wouldn't want a free self-heating 'blanket'?
No, it's better to watch them first because they are quicker. The director's cut stuff is interesting, but explaining stuff just slows the story down. That was one of Rodenberry's big innovations (original Star Trek). He said something to the effect that in a Cop Show or a Western, you need to shoot someone, you don't spend 5 minutes explaining how a gun works, you just pull out a gun & shoot them. Star Trek, the same way. I don't think any of the shows ever explained Phasers or the Transporter, for instance
It is the same with movies. Of course, once you've seen the movie, it's interesting to see how they did stuff & why they did it that way, But, not the first time
Oh, and Silver, honey, you are forgetting Somebody has to clean that glass door Better you than me
Silver, you naughty minx! You're getting to be just as bad as Cayenne.
Wait, I think this is the first time Silver "voices" that they are a herd. No?
RotK would depress the hell out of me, were I in Silver Glow's position. It ends, and it ends, and everything ends, and the magic goes into the west and the Fellowship is broken forever, and she's already got that in the back of her mind with her impeding departure. I love the books, but they make my heart sick--victory comes at the cost of everything, and then everybody leaves.
One cannot get service on foot through a DriveThroughWindow:
The insurance only covers motorized vehicles. If an idiot driver injures or kills a pedestrian in the DriveThrough, the insurance will not cover it. Pedestrians trying to order in the DriveThrough must come inside. The staff have strict orders not to serve pedestrians in the DriveThrough. It is strictly "Come inside or no service.".
This totally breaks my suspension of disbelief, a talking horse I can take but a college age man doing the washing up? No way!
7943911
The mouth of Sauron is mentioned, I thought he only appeared in the extended version.
Yeah, Shadowfax doesn't get any of the respect he should! I'm surprised she doesn't mention Bill although it is a rather small part, I guess if they'd made the films a bit latter they would have had a real pony actor to play him.
7943963 1970's we had a storm so bad here that the plows were pulled from the roads and bus service was cancelled. Several malls were used as shelters for the night before they got the roads drivable again.
7944586
Dang.
Best time to watch the movies, when th weathers active, tomorrow, if its light or stopped, then its time to dig out the front door and try and find the car again, and if theres time and capable, play away from the roads.
Could be intresting with Earth Ponies clearing roads by instead of using ploughs, using Snow Rollers.
Once the snow gets too deep for blade ploughs, then the Blowers come out. silver better be shown two clips of video demonstrating a Blower in operation. One is from the front, either truck or train mounted. the other?.. Is the clip from James Bond, showing what happens if you miss your jump.
7944745 Plus some nasty ice storms over the years. Just part of living in Canada. I mean '96 was brutal to Ottawa and parts of Quebec, we had one North of Toronto in... '14? '13? that was really cool. Pine trees looked like they were covered in grapes, really cool actually.
7944869 The big was in early 1998. I was barely four, but I can still remember it. I remember the date well because of my little brother's birth.
The most recent, I think it was 13, we had one in Montreal around those years that broke a lot of things.
Someone pointed out to me, some time ago, how amazingly significant it was that Galadriel gave Gimli three strands of her hair, and every time it's mentioned, that comes to mind.
The TL;DR version: This prick Feanor asked Galadriel for a strand of her hair three times, and she could tell he was a prick, so she said no. So he threw a hissy-fit and made the Silmarils. The war for possession of the Silmarils makes the fighting over the One Ring look like that sissy-slap-fight you and your sister had in the backseat every time there was a long trip. And Gimli, if I remember right, asked for a single strand, and she gave him THREE. In the movie, you see Legolas slowly get this big smile when Gimli tells him about it, because the elf gets it.
7944418 To be fair, in the books Shadowfax barely get any respect either.
As for Bill, the movie mentioned him once rigth before Moria and that was it. He was a bigger character in the book version of Fellowship. Nothing major, but still bigger then in the movies.
7944332 media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/14/dd/cb/14ddcbfb6a719ec8afae54f9dfce3bf6.jpg
7944418
Well, i did this once.
As 'thank you' my GF at this time said "no sex" -_-
Just because I didn't came tail wiggling when she asked for it...
7945049 Do you have any source for that? I can't remember it from the Silmarillion or from the Unfinished tales. And after a quick look up o the internets, all I could find is mention of how Galadriel's hair inspired Feanor's creation of the Simarils and one mention in the essay about elvish writting about how Galadriel was able to perceive eraly on darkness within Feanor.
Still, the number 3 migth be an allusion to the 3 Simarils the hair inspired.
7945138
That's one of the things I miss about Texas. Whataburger make a damn fine fast food burger.
7944016 G3 doesn't bother me much. Good to know what her mark is, was a weird blank spot in my mental image of her.
Is she based off g3 silver glow then? Like colors and all else?
7945651
Apropos of nothing, but your avatar image made me laugh.
A small joy, but a joy nonetheless.
7945244
Not really. I clearly remember it from the Silmarillion, but my memory was never the best. And while I enjoyed it, it's really dry, so I can't read it again.
7945999 It is a great avatar. I painted it in about 5 min in ms paint.
Bob Ross 4evah
7944869
O Canada...
That does sound cool.
7946429
I normally get my SG fix via mobile browser which doesn't show the avatars in comments. So , I had to pull up the full site see for myself and I quite agree. It is a great avatar.
The next big thing in theater-going: Weather matching the movie scenes! <It's ...beautiful!)
Great timing on this. The fellowship of the Ring was on last week so I recorded it for this weekend.
extra comma
That's what I do. I'm using my TV as my computer screen right now.
Clearly, he's never actually seen Doctor Who. If he had, he'd know that the character is named "The Doctor", not "Doctor Who".
I wish I'd had that sort of convenience while sledding. Either a pegasus or a staircase would've made things much easier. No chance of that happening now, though; last I checked, someone had filled my old sledding grounds in and built a house on top of 'em.
That's what I do every single day in the DeviantArt forums! There are plenty of trolls to fight there, and some of them could probably count as Balrogs as well.
I have no idea whether I'd like anchovies on pizza because they're not on any menu or grocery store shelf I've ever seen.
Friendship is Magic!
7968269
Indeed. On another note, rumor has it that the 13rd incarnation will be a Doctrix.
7944313 Not everything. Sam, at least, has the Shire and all that is good in it saved for him. Gimli & Legolas get to pal around for a hundred years or so then head off to Valinor, and also end the Dwarf-Elf Feud.
Really, it's only Frodo & Arwen who kind of have 'sad' endings. Most others are varying degrees of happy.
7985850
But it's really not about any individual character's ending. The end of RotK is the end of the Third Age--an age of Myths, a Heroic Age. Great Evil passes from the world, but so does Great Good, and Great Power in general. The Elves pass, Gandalf and the other Maiar pass, Frodo and later Sam, as Great Heroes (ringbearers) pass, the other great Heroes slowly die off, and the Dwarves and Hobbits begin their inevitable slide toward nonexistence. Every scrap of Power and magic and Greatness bleeds out of the world until what we know today is all that's left.
It's the only ending that's right for the story, but it always depresses me. It's like thinking too much about entropy.
I love Lord of the Rings. It is the most grand, epic adventure there has ever been. No other movie has such scale, such ability to make you BELIEVE the whole world and all it's nations are on the balance.
7943911
No, extended edition.
7943963
I know, right?
I think that now they generally don't run the trains when it's likely to be that bad. Probably some trains have gotten stuck, at least for short periods, though. The railroads don't like it when they can't run trains, 'cause that cuts into their revenue, so they do everything that they can to ensure that the important lines stay open.
I know if a pegasus was trying to keep me warm with her wing, I wouldn't want to move.
7943964
LoTR extended editions had extra scenes in them, that weren't in the movies. I don't recall them slowing down the movie at all, and in fact we got great scenes like with the Mouth of Sauron.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/The_Mouth_of_Sauron.jpg
She probably won't leave too much of a butt-print on it, since her rump's mostly furry.
7944105
Although at least she's only showing off to her boyfriend and girlfriend, rather than anyone in Chicago who happens to be looking up.
7944207
Well, she's not specifically thinking about them, but more in general. So it's not quite as romantic.
7944313
Yeah, that's a good point. I guess I never thought of it quite like that, since I'd already read the books a good half-dozen times.
Especially when you have the shire-burning.
Watership Down has a sad ending, too. I think that might be the first novel that made me cry at the end.
7944586
Yeah, but you live practically above the arctic circle. So that's to be expected.
(Also, in all seriousness, you guys can get lake effect from Lake Erie and Lake Michigan and probably Lake Ontario, can't you?)
7944767
Yeah, nothing like spending a snowy winter's day inside watching movies. And speaking of which, it was snowing today.
The train plows are badass. The rotaries are the last ditch before they close the line; they can only fling the snow so far, and sometimes it gets too deep for them, and then you're stuck until the spring. True fact: Southern Pacific railroad used to also use dynamite to clear switchpoints and flangeways on Donner Pass.
7944993
I can't remember what year it was--think it was before '13--we had a pretty good snowstorm out here, and my buddy and I just went out driving around for the fun of it. He had a Samurai and I was driving an Astro, and we spent a couple of hours playing in the snow before going back home. The next day, when I got to work, I couldn't even get into the parking lot because the snow was so deep.
And a couple of years back, we had a nasty ice storm at Christmas that took out power to most of Lansing. Amazingly, it went just north of where I live, and so I didn't lose power at all.
7945049
You're remembering right about Gimli; in the movie, anyways, he says that he asked for a single strand of her hair and she gave him three.
I didn't know that, by the way.
7945050
None of the horses did.
As I recall--and it's been a while since I read the books--they set him loose before they went through the mines of Moria, didn't they? Or was it before they tried to cross the mountain pass?
7944332
That's totally up to the restaurant in question. As far as I know, there are no laws in Michigan which say that only cars and trucks can use the drive through lanes.
7944418
If my gf asked, I'd do them.
I dunno; that might have really changed the character of the film. Of course, they could have had a pony dressed as a terrestrial pony. . . .
7945138
There are lots of YouTube videos of people riding horses through drive-throughs, as well. Most of them get served, although I've seen one where they did make the girl tie up her horse and come inside.
7945651
Yup, she's entirely based off the G3 pony, although she doesn't have silver hearts on her hooves (unless she draws them on), and her wings aren't multicolored, which I've seen in some drawings of her.
7946630
My frozen neighbor to the north.
As John Oliver says, Michigan is shaped like a hand holding Detroit back from fighting Ontario.
7949990
That would certainly give you the full experience!
Maybe not for normal movies, but I could see a theme park going for that. Plus, given the right weather team, it might be possible to get actual snow year-round.
7951065
7968269
I would if I had a TV
Yup. He's never seen it (and neither have I).
That was always the worst part of sledding--ten seconds of fun, and then five minutes to trudge back up the hill to do it again.
Luckily for me, my comment section is largely troll-free. Here and on DeviantArt.
Really? I can get canned anchovies at my local grocery store.
It is, indeed.
7985850
Bittersweet would perhaps be the right word for it, I think.
7986055
Yeah . . . sometimes stories have an ending which isn't exactly happy, but is inevitable.
8003738
Oh, yes. I totally agree. It's one of my favorites for that very reason. Aside from a couple of scenes with Legolas I don't particularly care for (shield-surfing), every other part of that movie feels so real to me. More so than nearly anything else I've ever watched, and I'm including movies which are set in the present, on Earth, with no fantasy or sci-fi elements.
8030652 This week's storm is kinda high ranked I guess. It was made spectacular by the fact that last onday, there wasn't any snow remaining in most of the province and then suddenly we got from 40 to 75 cm depending of where you were. Complete with huge wind, a stupid situation involving people spending the whole nigth trapped in their car on a highway (including two death)...
8030668 Yes, they released Bill before Moria, they found him back on the way back home when they passed by the Prancing Pony.
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8030634
The books give me that melancholy just as bad. It's the elves. When Legolas talks about having seen the sea and heard the gulls and knows that he will not be able to resist the call to the West. That's what starts the whole entropy-melancholy for me, every readthrough.
Oof, yes it does. How about 'The Last Unicorn'? The film version hits harder for me on that front, because of the music (though everyone should read the book in order to appreciate Beagle's sheer artistry with language). America did an amazing job.
8031089
Oh yeah, that one's a sucker-punch to the feels, as well. Especially since the book's so good at balancing funny and serious.
'Pippin'
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Correction made; thank you!
Good God, man, spoilers! I haven't seen the trilogy in a year!
7944418
I hadn't really thought about it, but yeah, being King of the Horses didn't really have any impact on the story. It's not like the horses all rose up to help men fight the orcs...
8418658
That's one thing that disappointed me about the movie. Where was the inspirational speech from Shadowfax?
8418850
Éowyn versus the Witch King.
Éowyn is unhorsed
Éowyn "unhorses" the Witch King
Witch King breaks Éowyn's shield and arm
Witch King: "Fool! No man can kill me!"
Witch King gets trampled by horse charge led by Shadowfax
Shadowfax: "WHI-I-I-I-INNNNNNE-E-E-E-E-EY!"*
Director: "Cut! Wait, no, that's pretty good. Leave it and keep rolling!"
*Translation: "I'm a stallion, bitch-king!"
8418890
Seriously, Shadowfax should have gotten at least one heroic kill. Maybe the Witch King would have been too much of a departure from the book, but how about stomping a Worg into oblivion? That's something that IRL equines can do, after all.
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Donkey don't take no st from no coyote.