B2MeM 2013: Wildcard Day

[dawn_felagund]

Athelas they named it, and it grows now sparsely and only near places where they dwelt or camped of old; and it is not known in the North, except to some of those who wander in the Wild. It has great virtues …

Throughout the month, we will offer weekly wildcard days, days when there are no new prompts but instead a simple, Tolkien-related task, for those who wish to participate. We hope wildcard days will give you a chance to refresh your muses, read, catch up on your WiPs, and breathe! :)

Our second wildcard day task: Stop and smell the athelas.

All of us came here from more or less the same place. We picked up a book or maybe went to see a movie. We found ourselves in a new world, from which we have not yet been able to fully return.

Today, we stop and remember what brought us here. Maybe there was a chapter, a passage, a scene, a character--something that grabbed your hand or your heart and has never let go. For today’s wildcard task, choose your favorite chapter from Tolkien and reread it.

Still it smells sweet when bruised, does it not? If sweet is the right word: wholesome, maybe, is nearer.

If you wish to participate in today’s wildcard day, you don’t have to do anything special besides rereading your favorite chapter. Of course, if you want to say more about what you chose or how you came to love Tolkien, do feel free to comment here or make a post to this community.

Comments

[lin4gondor.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to write anything as yet for any of the wonderful prompts we are getting for B2MEM 2013, so I thought I'd at least contribute here for Wild Card Day! The chapter I'll be rereading today is FotR's "The Ring Goes South." I have been a fan of Boromir since I first began reading the trilogy some 40 years ago -- I still have one of my very early copies of the book, an old dog-eared volume where I underlined in green pen all the (in my opinion) heroic and significant things Boromir did and said, as well as all the ways other characters remembered his bravery after he was gone. One chapter that has the most green underlining is this one, where Boromir (well, and Aragorn, too, lol!) saves the hobbits in the snow storm on Caradhras.

Two of my favorite lines in this chapter are as follows:

"When heads are at a loss bodies must serve, as we say in my country. The strongest of us must seek a way."

"But happily your Caradhras has forgotten that you have Men with you... And doughty Men too, if I may say it; though lesser men with spades might have served you better. Still, we have thrust a lane through the drift; and for that all here may be grateful who cannot run as light as Elves."

Can't wait to read it again!

[dreamflower]

I love Boromir in the Caradhras chapter--it was the first time I began to really consider him as a character.

(I also remember being quite annoyed with both Gandalf and Legolas in that chapter as well, LOL!)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

How did I come to love Tolkien?

I initially had no interest to read The Lord of the Rings (my encounters with "fantasy literature" had, so far, been disappointing, and what little I'd seen of the Bakshi movie just left me puzzled and bored). It was clearly Not My Thing. Then, in a friend's quote collection - we had little books in which we collected all sorts of favourite quotes, from books, films, philosophers, poets - I came across the Ring-spell in its glorious entirety. Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky...
Eight brief lines of archaic poetry, and for some reason they gripped me at once. There was just something about them that resonated deeply. F. said that it was from a book, and how the hell had I not read it yet? And in the original, please, because it was hard to get the "old" German translation and the "new" one was crap. (By now, there's a New new translation, which is based on the old but avoiding the mistakes the first translator made - and, above all, the mistakes of the second translator.)
A few weeks later on a class trip to Bonn, we spent some time in a big bookstore that also had a section of English books, and I bought the big green paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings that they were offering.
I found even "Concerning Hobbits" fascinating (maybe because it was so new to me), and never had the "boring first chapters" issues many other readers seem to have -- I clearly was under the Ring-spell. ;)
A few weeks later, I was at a big Judo competition, and whenever nothing was happening (which was often), I read a bit further in The Lord of the Rings. That was mostly considered a weird thing to do, because it's a big book was considered a book for dorkish guys, AND THEN IT WAS IN ENGLISH OMG. But one of the trainers grinned when she saw what I was reading and said "When you're done with that, you should try The Silmarillion".

And that, really, was that.

So for me, it all started with Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky.... Which is a quick read. Done! ;)

What brought me here, in this specific place, as a fanficcer?

I had just given up hope of finding fellow Tolkien fans or even just fellow geeks at uni (I would have thought that there would be more fanpeople! I mean, why else would you study English Philology? :P) when - before Japanese class, ironically - I overheard two fellow students saying something along the lines of "... and then there's that Legolas/Haldir story I found at the Library of Moria..." and I was all OMG LEGOLAS HALDIR MORIA YOU PEOPLE ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE. That was how I found out about slash fanfic - and also about LJ, for which one of the two gave me an invite code, which you needed at that time.
Eventually, I saw a fic recc for The Vain Songs by applegnat on my f-list. So far, I had thought that the sort of fanfic that got published and had a market had to be a) slash and b) based on LotR; now I realised that this was also done for The Silmarillion - and that fanfic could be more than just a funny, one-shot, potentially sexy quicky - that it could be poetic, epic, thoughtful, brilliant... and loooong. That was a big step - I realised that fanfic was more. But it was still something that other people wrote, and I consumed. Until somebody on my f-list said they had discovered this absolutely fantastic Fëanorian fanfic, Another Man's Cage...
AMC was the turning-point in my fannish history, because suddenly, I was looking at the sort of fanfic I would want to write. And sure enough, it only took me a couple more years before I dared to share a piece of fanfic I had written...

Of course, re-reading AMC is going to take a bit longer. I might not manage to complete that task today... but I'll make a start!

[arandil13.livejournal.com]

AMC is possibly the best Silmarillion fic out there.

[engarian.livejournal.com]

Do the Appendices count as a chapter? If so, I'm all on it. Although I've read LOTR 100's (quite literally) of times, it was always the appendices that pulled me in because that's where the greater story was hidden. Then, when The Silmarillion came out, I was in heaven. The Appendices suddenly were there, expanded into the history that they so needed to be. Happy, happy me....

- Erulisse (one L)

[dawn_felagund]

Of course! :) Our prevailing policy applies here as well: If you think it counts, it counts. For some, a favorite "chapter" may actually be an essay or a draft or ... an appendix. :) Have fun!

[arandil13.livejournal.com]

My favorite chapter is not what brought me here originally... I came for Legolas. I stayed for Feanor.

So... not one chapter, but the early Silm is my favorite, and what I have re-read.