I've been watching snippets of Be Good Johnny Weir. And God, they hurt. A lot. The pressure is terrible. Well, there are scenes of him shopping, frolicking, basically being outrageous. But you can see how the competition, winning, is uppermost in his mind. And you caught yourself wishing hard that he would win, that he would skate well ( Read more... )

( Figure skating meets Mercedes Lackey Last Herald-mage series. )

I had dinner with two new friends I knew from a reporting job. One works in an art gallery that markets artist merchandise, ordinary products like pendants and piggy banks and doorknobs designed by renowned artists that may fetch tens of thousands of dollars apiece. We had a long conversation about the prices of art objects, and whether the money ( Read more... )

Firstly, layne67 could use a few well-written and truly heartwrenching, tearswringing DEATHFIC (fics where a major character dies) recs, here, so if you've got any, please share the goodies.

( And the Frodo connection... )

( movie characters vs. book characters, and the actors' take on them )

I'm 50% positive that I've read somewhere in the book that the hobbits once took a bath and washed their clothes while they were on the road, either pre- or post-Rivendell, but I can't for the life of me find in which body of water they did it. I read the Ithilien chapter twice and found no reference to bathing and clothes-washing, so, please, can ( Read more... )

Still busy *whacks RL*, still having serious trouble catching up, still only reading ficlets and saving longer tales to be read God knows when, still merely skipping and skimming and giving up at skip=60, and thinking of lurking. Still here, anyway. :)

But life has been pretty nice lately. Last week I saw ( Kingdom of Heaven... )

All kinds of great essays on fandom and writing are cropping up lately, and I've enjoyed reading them.

The first is Everything I Know About Fandom which I found thanks to lullenny. I love these points most of all:

1. The first rule of fandom is: do it yourself. If there's a neglected character, a fic type you wish people would pay more attention to, or ( Read more... )

This meme came about around Thanksgiving, actually, which showed how absent I have been lately.

Things I'm grateful for this fandom--in no particular order

1. Frodo.

2. rabidsamfan's drabbles, fics and ficlets.

3. Mardil and Ioreth in belegcuthalion's Winter Fire--they're just so lovable and real and alive!

4. livejournal.

5. Middle Earth News

6. aratlithiel, belegcuthalion, elasg, trust_n0_1 . ( Read more... )

Things I learned from spending two nights with the shieldmaidens:

1. No matter how little sleep you get during the week, and no matter how sleepy you are when you climb onto bed, you can still talk with your friends in the darkness till 4 am.

2. It actually hurts to try to laugh harder when you're trying to sing Elvis Costello's She and the ( Read more... )