I added another short story to my Frodo/Éomer "Closer" series on AO3, called "Dark Whispers". It is dark, so heed the tags and notes, and proceed with caution. I hope the tags are sufficient - I struggled with them for weeks, or this story would have been up much earlier. If you read it, let me know what you think!

Yaaay! At long last, chapter 3 of my Frodo/Éomer fic is up on AO3!

Sorry this took so long, but getting used to my new schedule including a few hours of work each day took a while. Also, Ladysunrope had some very good suggestions for this chapter, the implementation of which took me a while to get right. (I'll just say that Éomer holds a lot of rage inside, and sometimes it threatens to take over.)

You can find the new chapter here, or read the story from the beginning here.

Anyone have a copy of No Windows by Telanu? The Angst Archive where it was hosted says"removed by author request", and the Wayback Machine/internet archive doesn't have any older versions of the page.

EDIT: Oh phew, I found that I had at some point bookmarked a copy of it from FemGeeks.net that was on the Wayback Machine!

Just a quick notice to let you know I'm now also on Dreamwidth! Mostly as a backup, because of the recent news that all LJ servers now seem to be in Russia... but anyway, if you have a DW account feel free to friend me over there! It's http://ourdramaqueen.dreamwidth.org/ of course.

(Fingers crossed that crossposting to LJ works...)

If you don't have the The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Extended Edition (yet), but would like to see Benedict Cumberbatch's audition tape for Smaug, check out the video in this Moviepilot article. I was SO happy to find that they included it on the EE, and - well I'm obviously a teensy bit biased *cough*, but he's utterly brilliant!

Gah, a month and a day until I get to see The Battle of the Five Armies (can only do the Saturday after opening, due to hubbie's current weekday schedule)! Can't wait and yet don't want it to end, if you know what I mean...

I'm working on a personal update, so hopefully I'll be able to post it before the end of the month. *fingers crossed*

WTF is up with Sherlock fan fic lately?! The vast majority of the fics I've come across recently with a really promising premise (like Moriarty abducting Sherlock and then sending John videos of torturing him in various ways - obviously not new, but one I just recently came across) by authors I hadn't read before turn out to be badly written: bad characterization, bad grammar, using similarly sounding words the wrong way (i.e. taught instead of taut etc.), endless and unnecessary internal waffling from all parties inserted in a dialogue scene (enabled by changes of POV every few paragraphs)... *shudders, pulls at own hair* Makes me wish I could shred digital fic like paper! (Sadly I don't have an icon of Sherlock shooting the wall, or one of his face when he deduces the CIA men grabbing Mrs. Hudson, which would both fit marvelously...)

Thank goodness some of the established authors are still active and maintaining the quality, and there is the occasional good fic by new authors too, but it's so tedious - and from my experience, unusual/a recent trend in this fandom - having to sift through all that tripe to get to the few gems. :/

From the official PBS twitter:

Surprise! Benedict Cumberbatch sheds the serious Sherlock to share some laughs w/ these 2 - stay tuned! #Counterbatch pic.twitter.com/SWbhLezClX

— PBS (@PBS) January 31, 2014

I hope I'll be able to watch it online somewhere once it aired, as we don't have any TV connection currently.

I know I know, I still need to put together a fandom post... although by now both The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug and Sherlock S3 are almost an old hat (well, S3E3 of the latter aired in the US tonight, but many Americans have seen it already anyway...) but I would still like to put down some of my reactions/thoughts. As much as I remember them, hee. Oh, and Benedict has written the foreward for Weta's upcoming book about the design/creation of Smaug for DoS - can't wait to hold that book in my greedy little hands!

I am late in mentioning that I got two more holiday cards last week, by suzy_74 and textualdeviance (Love the picture of the bug!). Thank you! :)