Iiiiiit’s Pent! Drawn back when I was kind of obsessing over trying to put him in Sims3. Still haven’t managed it to my satisfaction, not that I’ve done any work on that whatsoever since the Tour started.

I think I had things to say, but I have forgotten them. Well, I finished re-reading LotR, and y’know, last time, I really noticed how funny Tolkien is. He is hilarious. This time… I got a lot more of the sense of the incredible sadness… and a loooot of high language. Man. Talk about character-stripping. By the time the coronation rolls around, there are so many characters that used to have, well, character! And then they all start talking the same. And I wonder – you know, it talks about how Merry and Pippin were chilling in Minas Tirith, and then Legolas and Gimli roll up and they apparently do a lot of talking and laughing and being buddies, and I wonder – what did they talk about? It’s not important to the epic as a whole, but there’s an opportunity to see these people in ‘normal’ circumstances.

But the Scouring of the Shire is awesome. They come home, notice things aren’t right, and seize the initiative! Pippin goes all Gondor-knightly on some bully, and then Merry is like “lol, these guys have noooo clue about tactics!” and you know, they used to be ordinary hobbits, running terrified from Black Riders. Well, they’d still probably run from Black Riders. But you know what I mean. But now they have absorbed (by osmosis, you know) some of the bad@$$ery of the people they’d been travelling with, and of course hanging out with armies for months, you’re gonna learn something about tactics. So poof! they become great heroes at home as well as abroad. Get a chance to show what they’ve learned in the setting that fits them best. And I still cry at the end when Frodo goes away…