Pandemic diary: April

So here we are, over a year from my first covid diary. Just a couple of days after my previous post on the subject, the government announced we would be going into a sort-of-lockdown for most of March, and a week later, the municipal elections were postponed until June. The government then wanted to introduce draconian restrictions on movement, including a curfew for some of the worst-affected areas, but their proposed measures were struck down as unconstitutional and pulled. Luckily, toward the end of March cases started receding, and suddenly, barely over a week since the curfew failed to pass, we started talking about opening everything up again. It's enough to give you whiplash.

As you can see from the graph of confirmed infections, we've brought cases down to approximately where they were before we started opening up again in January. Restaurants and suchlike are now opening again. I think you see where this may well be going.

What's getting lost is that there was no reason for either the December or March-April spikes to happen at all. The only reason they did was, frankly, short-sightedness and stupidity, and of course greed. People died for it.

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I've mentioned this before, but what I find quite personally hurtful is that I know people who are ostensibly liberal, maintain they support free speech and deliberative democracy - and also believe I shouldn't be writing any of this, because they're on social media sharing messages that say "unless you're a fully accredited academic expert, shut up". I absolutely agree that the vapid opportunism of the right-wing opposition is shameful and stupid, but at the point where even supposedly progressive people are lumping everyone critical of the government with far-right covid deniers, well, I guess authoritarian technocracy doesn't look so bad to you after all, does it?

We transitioned from this directly to the discourse on the postponed elections, which immediately became more of the same. The extreme right tried to spin moving the elections into some kind of communist plot against democracy, which was ridiculous. Quite a lot of people across the political spectrum, however, were very unhappy with how the move was handled, and the apparently total lack of preparation by the responsible state agencies. This then got the government loyalists to declare that these two criticisms are exactly the same: if you think the state hasn't done everything perfectly, you're a far-right extremist. It's really been something.

So yeah, we're certainly learning a lot about our fellow citizens during this pandemic, and so much of it is so much worse than I would have ever expected. I ended up taking a bit of a break from Twitter because of this bullshit, and I feel much better for it. I understand that people are tired and stressed out, because I am too, but some of this behavior has still been absolutely appalling.

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Anyway I don't have much to say; as I predicted, I'm pretty sure I'll be teaching remotely for the rest of the semester, and I really dislike it. Not being able to see or properly interact with people makes teaching incredibly difficult, and at worst reduces it to a filmed monologue. That's not what I do or want to do. However, the way the employment situation for teachers is, it looks like teaching, whether remotely or in-person, isn't going to be my problem for much longer. There are next to no job openings, and when there are, they're inundated with dozens of applicants. I keep applying for everything I can, and have yet to land a single interview. In several cases, there have been 20-50 people applying for a temporary position of one year, only for the school to give the job to the same person who had it the previous year. So it's hard to see the point of applying at all. The logic seems to be the old classic: you can't get a job because you have no experience, therefore you can't get any experience. I have nothing except a couple of lecture courses to look forward to next fall.

The unavoidable logic seems to be that I need to find another profession. Again. What makes this particularly frustrating is that I keep getting excellent feedback on my teaching. Unfortunately, as in academia, so in teaching it doesn't matter one bit whether or not you're good at your job. I would dearly like to find something where it does matter, but I have no real idea what that could be. Quite frankly, this is all incredibly depressing.

Warhammer 40,000: The Deathwatch

 It is clear that we are fighting a losing battle on Earth. The alien hordes are overwhelming in number. The best we can do is slow down their progress. The only hope for humanity is to tackle the aliens at their source.
- UFO: Enemy Unknown, UFOpedia entry Alien Origins

If I remember correctly, the Deathwatch were invented in 3rd edition as a single squad of Marine xenos-hunters you could include in an Imperial army as a sort of ally. I thought this was very cool since it was a sort of 40k XCOM, and when a copy of Deathwatch: Overkill was available at our friendly local gaming store for a considerable discount, I grabbed it.

I was delighted to find that the Overkill box included a Blood Ravens Librarian; they were the protagonists of the excellent Dawn of War. His name is Jensus Natorian; all of the Overkill marines have names, and as far as I can tell, all of them seem to have come out of the Knights of the Old Republic name generator. Anyway he's our HQ choice. Since I'm figuring this out by 8th edition rules, a Librarian with force sword and bolt pistol works out at 88 points. I'd recently read N.K. Jemisin's amazing Fifth Season, and the model made me think of Alabaster.

The fact that all the Deathwatch marines originally come from some other chapter and still bear that chapter's heraldry is one of the big reasons I wanted to build some Deathwatch models of my own. It gives me a chance to own models representing chapters whose names are bouncing around my head for whatever reason, or that have cool names or shoulder pad designs, in a unit that I could actually conceivably use on the tabletop.

I don't know why they paint the left arms of their armor silver. I choose to believe that in the past, a Johnny Silverhand posergang stopped an alien invasion of Earth, and the association of silver left hands with fighting the xenos has survived into the 41st millenium.

The way I look at it, the models in Overkill make a start for four units. First, there's Ennox Sorrlock (Iron Hands, big Kotor vibe) with his combi-melta, Salamanders Terminator Garran Branatar with a heavy flamer and that power fist-meltagun thing, and Zameon Gydrael (Dark Angels) with a plasma pistol and power sword. Clearly these guys are going to be the core of a devastating short-range shooting and mêlée unit; looking at the codex, I guess that means this is a Malleus kill team. The Dark Angel has the most sergeantlike equipment, so does that mean Malleus kill team Gydrael?

Then there's Vael Donatus, the Smurf with the special boltgun, and Rodricus Grytt (Imperial Fists) with his frag cannon; I'm thinking I'll build a shooty squad around them, maybe a Furor team. I hope Brother Grytt doesn't mind I changed his company.

The two jump pack fellows, Antor Delassio the Blood Angel and Edryc Setorax (Raven Guard), are outfitted for close combat, so I think they need to be in a squad of their own.

Then we have Jetek Suberei, the White Scar on his bike; while you can include bikers in Deathwatch squads, I find the idea absurd, so I'll have to look into a bike squad later.

And, of course, the titular chaplain of the Kill Team! Frankly, I thought he was boring; and besides, we already have a smurf. So I gave the Chaplain a Techno Roider head from Statuesque Miniatures, to make Chaplain Messia of the Scythes of the Emperor, seen here awaiting her jump pack.

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As a bonus, I found an ancient Terminator with lightning claws I'd assembled but not painted back in the day; I stuck him on a bigger base and made him a Jade Paladin. I freehanded the chapter logo and am still in absolute shock over how well it turned out.

Anyway I'm sure I'll build a close combat squad around him at some point!

I was also delighted to find that the Dark Angels veterans box I bought for an entirely different project came with an assault cannon; joined to an ancient metal Deathwing terminator body I had lying around, this combined with a Kromlech power maul to make a Terminator for the Furor team:

I followed the heraldry instructions in the Deathwing supplement to the original Space Hulk and split the shoulder pad between the Deathwing symbol and the Terminator's personal glyph, which I repeated on his leg.

By now I was getting into building Terminators, and decided to dig into the Grey Knights bits I got ages ago to make Captain Phasma, for this Deathwatch Terminator from the Exorcists chapter. They're a Grey Knights successor chapter, after all, so it makes sense they'd have similar equipment! I'm calling that halberd a power axe.

Since the Deathwatch upgrade kits I ordered weren't showing up, I gave both Terminators Grey Knight shoulder pads and painted them silver. It's close enough!

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I was surprised by how much I enjoyed painting Space Marines black, and tried to get my hands on the discontinued Start Collecting Deathwatch box so I could have some more. Unfortunately all the start collecting boxes were sold out, and, of course, Brexit happened: the jump packs and Deathwatch accessory sprue I ordered in January still haven't showed up. So this is everyone from Overkill, and I have to say, I'm quite happy with them! The Deathwatch paint scheme is surprisingly simple and effective.

That was fun! Whenever we get Games Workshop deliveries again, I'm making more Deathwatch dudes.

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Also I made some Warlord Games Judges Anderson while I was at it, so maybe I'll post them here.

I originally got myself a Judge Anderson to use as an Inquisitor with my Custodes, and I didn't really know what to do with the model with the bike, except that it was cool so I built it.

I got a second Anderson for a different project, so I had a biker model left over. What's cooler than a motorbike? A jetbike.

Hey, if we agree that they're Inquisitors, then it kinda fits in with the Deathwatch.

Let's Read Tolkien 79: Homeward Bound

At last the hobbits had their faces turned toward home.

Gandalf and the four hobbits set off from Rivendell for Bree. Frodo has some flashbacks on the way, but they have a comfortable trip to the Prancing Pony. There, they learn from Barliman that Bill Ferny and some of the other suspicious Bree-men tried to take over Bree or something, and were chased out in a fight that left several people dead. Ever since, life in Bree has been more or less miserable, with the Rangers gone and everything. Gandalf and the hobbits reassure him that now that the war is over and there's a king again, everything will be fine again. Barliman has to have it explained to him multiple times that the king is Strider. The hobbits are also told that all is not well in the Shire, and Sam is reunited with Bill the Pony. Finally they take off for the Shire, and Gandalf leaves them at the Old Forest, where he intends to go spend some quality time with Tom Bombadil.

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Let's be honest here: this entire (very short) chapter only exists so that Barliman can be told that Strider is now the king.

This chapter also closes the circle on the morality play of Arnor: in the Council of Elrond, Aragorn called Barliman fat and complained that people like him don't understand how the Rangers keep them safe. Well, now that the dúnedain have taken off to fight in the War of the Ring, the woods around Bree are suddenly infested with wolves, bandits and monsters as if it was Skyrim, and the people of Bree presumably now realize the value of the Rangers. I don't really know what Tolkien was going for with this. Maybe he just thought it was cool. But for a 21st-century reader, the idea that there is a secret network of surveillance and violence keeping you safe and you need to be thankful for it is really kind of sinister.

Finally, I think we should take a moment with Frodo's last words in this chapter.

"Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together," said Merry. "We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded."

"Not to me," said Frodo. "To me it feels more like falling asleep again."

I talked earlier about how the Shire may seem like a perfect rural utopia, but it really isn't to Frodo. Even Bilbo, originally introduced to us as the absolute embodiment of middle-class hobbitness, ends up settling in Rivendell. To the others, returning to the Shire is a Bilbo-like homecoming and a lived-happily-ever-after storybook ending; to Frodo, it isn't. As he puts it to Gandalf, "I am wounded with knife, sting, and tooth, and a long burden". More to the point, what will be his place in a society that, like Barliman, has no comprehension whatsoever of what he's gone through? It would be interesting to contrast Frodo's experience with that of World War I veterans - like Tolkien.

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Next time: border formalities.

Rogue Trader: Meet House Frunze

One of the best-known and longest-established Rogue Trader houses of the Acheron sector, and quite crucial to our tabletop Rogue Trader campaign, is House Frunze.

The House Frunze symbol: a diving peregrine falcon.
During the 9th Black Crusade led by Abaddon the Despoiler, Imperial General Lucretia Frunze so distinguished herself in the ferocious battles on Antecanis IV that the High Lords of Terra granted her a Warrant of Trade, and she established her own Rogue Trader house.

Although Lucretia Frunze came from a long line of Imperial nobles, her family wasn't particularly wealthy. However, with their contacts and Lucretia's reputation, they secured an ancient star galleon called the Nomine Imperatoris to be her flagship. With a staff mostly recruited from her subordinates in the Imperial Guard, Lucretia Frunze headed to the newly opened Acheron sector to seek her fortune. She was quite succesful, plundering the ruins and remnants of the xenos and blazing new warp routes into the sector. The seat of House Frunze was eventually established on the frontier world of Curzon, which has since grown to a burgeoning hive world at the center of a great web of commercial links.

The Warrant was inherited by Lucretia's daughter Electra Frunze, who succesfully continued her mother's work in consolidating Imperial rule over the new sector. Electra established the family tradition of sending younger children to be educated in the Schola Progenium, as a memorial to her mother's service in the Imperial Guard and a token of the family's unquestioning loyalty to the Imperium. Several Frunze scions have ended up in the Imperial Guard as both officers and Commissars, as well as in the Ecclesiarchy, through this path.

Another legacy of Electra's time is House Frunze's feud with noble house Rufius. House Rufius, originally a naval family, was one of the first Imperial noble houses to gain a foothold in the new sector, and have remained a powerful influence ever since. No-one remembers what the disagreement between House Rufius and House Frunze was, but it seems to have started in Electra Frunze's day, and the ill will between the two houses has gone on ever since. As House Rufius were a major investor in the Sancrist colony and traditionally provide its lieutenant governor, this has made visits to Sancrist slightly tense for House Frunze, and encouraged them to develop their own contacts in the Aradec Confederacy.

Electra was in turn succeeded by her son, Arminius Frunze. Arminius was a highly devout man, who spent a great deal of his youth in the Ecclesiarchy before inheriting the Warrant. As a Rogue Trader, he focused on converting newly rediscovered human worlds to the Imperial creed. He was joined in this endeavour by his closest friend from his days in the Ecclesiarchy, a firebrand missionary who was later canonized as Saint Mettius of Acheron. Their missionary efforts were so succesful that a race of foul xenos set out to thwart them. Arminius Frunze and Saint Mettius were captured by treachery and brought to the xenos homeworld, where they were put to death.

The Warrant of Trade now passed to Arminius's daughter, Octavia Frunze. She was furious at her father's murder and set out to make the xenos pay. Using her family's connections, she was able to buy a Lunar-class cruiser that the Imperial Navy was decommissioning. She gave the ship the name Nemesis, and set out for the xenos homeworld. The Nemesis and her consorts destroyed the xenos navy, and Octavia led a strike team to the planet to recover her father's body. The Nemesis then conducted an orbital bombardment that laid waste to the whole planet, wiping out the xenos. The name of their species and everything about them except their treachery has since been forgotten, even the name of their homeworld: it is now known as Corpus Sancti, in memory of Saint Mettius's martyrdom in the name of the Emperor.

By the time Mordecai Frunze inherited the Warrant of Trade, the star of House Frunze was on the wane. The Nemesis was still the most famous ship in the entire sector, but the other Rogue Trader houses were overtaking Frunze in influence and, increasingly, wealth. Mordecai was a secretive man who was determined to reverse this decline, but he took no-one into his confidence and led the Nemesis on increasingly mysterious missions into unknown systems. His solitude and dedication only deepened with the death of his wife and only child in a tragic accident, and the Nemesis was gone for longer and longer, with the family's finances falling further into disarray.

Mordecai died in unclear circumstances in 943M41, somewhere in the Desolatio Thanos. His body was brought back to Vestigium Hanini by a prize crew on a raider the Nemesis had captured; the whereabouts of the Nemesis itself remain unknown. Because Mordecai Frunze's direct heir was dead, the Warrant was inherited by his young nephew Laurenz Frunze, at the time a student at the Schola Progenium. Young Laurenz now faces the formidable task of restoring the fortunes of House Frunze.

Let's Play Freedom: Underground Railroad

Obviously we don't have a lot of opportunities for board gaming during the pandemic, but I did get a chance to play Freedom: Underground Railroad last month.

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Freedom: Underground Railroad is a co-op game for 1-4 players, set before and during the US civil war. The objective is to abolish slavery, both by gathering support for abolitionism and smuggling freed slaves north to Canada. 

Like so many board games these days, the setup feels really complicated, but when you actually start playing, it isn't, so you just gotta have faith in the process. The system of buying and using tokens to perform actions, along with the various player roles and so on, initially feels difficult but isn't too fiddly once you actually get going. The components are reasonably well-made; there's quite a few cards, tokens and doodads, and a couple of special dice for random slave catcher movement.

Basically the game is like a co-op puzzle: you move slaves north, collecting money on the way and trying to avoid slave catchers. The mechanics are nothing fancy, but they work. Where the game really shines is theme. There's a rotating series of cards featuring people and events of the time, which are pretty good; here's an example:

But the biggest thing is that you really get into the theme of the thing! You beat the game by buying a set amount of support tokens and freeing a certain amount of slaves; you lose if too many slaves get caught or you can't do this in the allotted turns. It's not really a problem if some slaves are caught, and when we started we figured it would be okay if we lost some; once we started getting into the game, it was not! So I'd say it was a surprisingly intensive experience. But it was also fun, and hey, we won!

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So this was a very brief sojourn into Freedom: Underground Railroad, and I obviously can't comment on how it stands up to repeated playthroughs. But I really enjoyed playing it, and I think it could even have some potential as an educational game: the theme, as I said, is spot on. The only downside I can really think of is that the game is a bit on the expensive side for what you actually get in the box. Overall I definitely recommend it.

Let's Paint Blood Red Skies

There goes the siren that warns of the air raid
There comes the sound of the guns sending flak
Out for the scramble, we've got to get airborne
Got to get up for the coming attack

- Iron Maiden: Aces High

I really liked painting my Star Wars: Armada squadrons, so when they were done, I went looking for something similar. Games Workshop recently came out with Aeronautica Imperialis, but it's eye-wateringly expensive, the models aren't very pretty, and the scale matches Adeptus Titanicus, which is probably the ugliest game GW has put out this millenium. So I'm not interested.

On the other hand, Warlord Games has Blood Red Skies, by Andy Chambers, no less. A 1/200 scale game of World War II aerial combat, meaning lots of cute little planes to paint and very fond memories of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. So I ordered the starter set.

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The starter set comes with a veritable fleet of aircraft: six Spitfires and six Bf 109s. My only problem is that it's based on the Battle of Britain, and I'm just not that into Battler Briton and all that. So the thought occurred to me: I've painted Soviet Lend-Lease Shermans, so why not make my Spitfires Soviet? While reading up on Soviet air force paint schemes online - a touchier subject than I expected! - I came across a claim that the Soviets used Spitfires on the Finnish front. Intriguingly, Flying Squadron 24 of the Finnish Air Force claims to have shot down several Spitfires in 1942-43, aces Ilmari Juutilainen and Jorma Karhunen claiming multiple kills. I don't know if it's true or not, but it seals my decision to paint the Spitfires in Soviet colors.

I went with this online guide for the paint scheme, as it seemed to fit with my general impressions. The undersides are done in Deep Sky Blue, with appropriate stars on the wings. For the top side, I went with Flat Green as the base color, and German Camo Dark Green camo stripes. The whole thing came out a bit darker than it perhaps should have, but I like it.

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Of course, I could also paint the Bf 109s in Finnish air force colours, but I'm not really a big fan of swastikas. And besides, Bf 109 ace Erich Hartmann seems to have been quite a character; he was "reprimanded by Hitler's adjutant for intoxication and for handling Hitler's hat", which is easily one of the best things I've ever read on Wikipedia.

I wanted my Messerschmitts to look clearly different from the Spitfires, so I decided to paint them grey. I've at least seen several pictures online of Hartmann's JG 52 planes being a very light grey on the underside and a darker grey on top, with yellow identification markings, so I'm going for something along those lines. Slightly to my surprise, Green Grey turned out to be the best-looking underside color! I did the top side in Light Grey with Neutral Grey camo stripes.

I'm pleased with the result. But there's another reason for painting the Messerschmitts in German colors, and it's strongly related to Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe: the Me-262. How could I refuse to add the first ever operational jet fighter to my collection? All the 262's I've ever seen depicted anywhere have been in dark green, but as I understand it, they will originally have entered service with a grey color scheme like the Bf 109s had, so that's what I'm going for here.

I did the upper fuselage the same way as the Bf 109s as well, but I felt like making the camo stripes a bit more cubist.

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Warlord did an end-of-year sale, and I picked up a couple of Soviet aces for the heck of it. First, here's Lydia Litvyak's Yak-1:

And Maria Dolina's Pe-2 bomber. This was actually a slightly disappointing model: it's made out of a resin that feels more like soft plastic, and unlike all the other aircraft, it won't stay on its flying stand! I ended up having to glue it on. I supplemented the Flat Green - German Camo Dark Green scheme with Burnt Umber to approximate the Soviet three-color bomber camo.

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Finally, I did end up painting an RAF plane after all: Warlord Games very kindly sent me a complimentary Boulton Paul Defiant with one of my orders. I painted it as a No. 264 Squadron aircraft, later named the Madras Presidency squadron after money donated from India to buy aircraft - another reminder that the British patriotic notion that they "stood alone" against Nazi Germany was, even in the Battle of Britain, nonsense. We tell similar lies about the Winter War.

I've taken a shot at something like the early war RAF Temperate Land Scheme, with the completely mad black-and-white underside, apparently a WWI relic for easier recognition from the ground.

I painted the upper fuselage Khaki and added camo stripes in US Olive Green; I think I did okay with the pattern, but maybe the base color should have been a bit lighter? 

But I'm quite happy with the end result! This was a fun model to paint, but it's a completely mad aircraft. The Defiant had no forward-firing guns: its weapons are in a turret behind the cockpit which can't fire straight forward. It was a product of the Douhetian bomber mania of the interwar years, when military strategists imagined that bombers would fly so fast and high that they couldn't be stopped. The idea was that the Defiant would be able to match speed with the bombers and approach them from below, where the turret gunner could engage them. Given what World War 2 air combat turned out to be like, it's perhaps most surprising that the Defiant wasn't a total failure, but it was soon moved to night fighter duties and then retired altogether; 264 Squadron transitioned to the (plywood!) de Havilland Mosquito in 1942.

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Anyway this was all a lot of fun to paint! The hard plastic models were excellent; the resin ones took a bit more work, but I feel they were worth it. This very exactly scratched the Rebellion / Armada squadrons painting itch, so I don't know, maybe I should get some Il-2s in case it strikes again...

Let's Read Tolkien 78: Many Partings

When the days of rejoicing were over at last the Companions thought of returning to their own homes.

Now that the partying is over, Frodo decides it's high time he got back to Rivendell to see Bilbo again. Arrangements are made: everyone will head north to Rohan shortly when Éomer comes to fetch Théoden's body from Gondor, and the hobbits can then head home. When he arrives, he and Gimli return to their quarrel back when Gimli was trying to commit suicide by Rohirrim: either Éomer acknowledges Galadriel as the most beautiful woman in the world, or Gimli assaults him with his axe. Éomer ripostes by saying that Arwen is hotter, and Gimli agrees to disagree.

Aragorn's court, wedding party and the fellowship escort Théoden to Edoras, where a Rohirrim funeral is held, and the marriage of Éowyn and Faramir is announced. The Fellowship continues west: Gimli and Legolas fulfill their mutual promises and visi the Glittering Caves, and they find Treebeard at Isengard - where Saruman has talked the ents into letting him go. Here the Fellowship finally splits up for good: Aragorn heads back home, Legolas and Gimli set off northward through Fangorn, and the others travel northwest.

On the road, Frodo's party meets Saruman, who swears at them and bums tobacco from the hobbits, before leaving with Gríma and muttering dark threats. The party of Lórien takes the Redhorn pass east, and the hobbits arrive in Rivendell just in time for Bilbo's 129th birthday. With the destruction of the Ring, age is catching up on Bilbo, and Frodo inherits his literary work. Eventually, Gandalf and the four hobbits leave Rivendell for Bree.

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The parallel chapter to Many Meetings, the show finally gets on the road back to the Shire. I think you can tell that Tolkien was into this, because his language is a bit more biblical than usual. While they're still in Gondor, I like that it's genuinely impossible to tell of Éomer and Gimli were actually going to fight or not.

It maybe needs to be pointed out that Éowyn's marriage to Faramir is throughout presented as an unequivocally good thing. This in spite of the fact that by the blood-racism of the Elronds of Middle-earth, it represents a "dilution" of Faramir's Nùmenoran blood. One imagines him frowning at the feast.

Since this is the last we'll see of Rohan, maybe a few words on it are in order. Like I said earlier, Rohan is Old English Mercia, but with more horses. Again, you can tell Tolkien is into it because of the long list of kings of Rohan, all solidly Anglo-Saxon names. But at Théoden's funeral, the Riders are also very foreign: a point is made of the fact that almost no-one understands their language, and while Théoden is very properly buried in a barrow, the Riders riding around it and singing in their strange tongue is closer to Tamerlane than Tamworth. I still have no idea why this is; either why Tolkien decided to make his northern horsemen into England-analogues or the other way around. I'm not aware of any biographical indications that Tolkien was like at all a horse dude. If you think about it, wouldn't the men of Dale have made a better fit for analogue-England, as waterborne traders with a mythical dragon-slayer as a national hero? But instead it's the horse-masters. Go figure.

The meeting with Saruman heavily foreshadows what's to come, and I can't help feeling that the emptiness of Tolkien's maps works against him here. Saruman has left Orthanc and is travelling northwest - where else could he be going? To set up as a beggar in Bree? Burgle Tom Bombadil? The ominous comment on the Southfarthing kind of clinches it in the end.

Having said that, I wonder if it's very responsible of Gandalf to just let Saruman go. He seems to complain when Treebeard did the same, but then again I don't know what they could have done, I guess.

The encounter with Saruman changes the mood somewhat from a triumphant homecoming to an expectation that the story isn't over yet, and meeting a clearly doddering Bilbo is also a reminder that things aren't just going to return to normal. I've said it a million times, but I'll say it again: I don't know what book the people who say this ends "happily ever after" with everything exactly the same as it was at the beginning have read, because it sure as hell wasn't this one.

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Next time: a pub.