Still Returning to the King

It's no use - my mind is still in Middle-Earth and refuses to leave for the West, well, other fandoms. honorh wrote a beautiful post here about the love between the four Hobbits. melymbrosia thankfully linked a lot of lj reviews in her journal.

But the fannish soul craves more than theory. So, some fanfic favourites. Firstly, about the most creepy AU ever, written with a rare command of language and imagination: Webs, by rozk. Yes, it's about Shelob. No, no one else ever thought of something like this, and yet it makes complete sense.

Secondly, Frodo introspection post-Ring destruction and pre-Grey Havens: the angst topic extraordinaire. It never gets old, if written like this. Not that it's not clear from the novel already, but if you ever wondered why Frodo really couldn't go on in the Shire...

On the other hand, Sam post-Grey Havens definitely is due for some hurt/comfort. My absolutely favourite example of this is "Those Who Remain" by Marnie, in which Sam and Celeborn (a combination which might seem odd at first glance but makes perfect sense once you read the story) talk about love, failure and life with a Ringbearer.

I think I mentioned before that generally speaking, I'm not into Sam/Frodo slash. Theirs is a love story and a story about love, no doubt about it, but it somehow seems to reduce and trivialize it to define it in romantic/sexual terms. (Not, I hasten to add, that sexual relationships per se are trivial.) There is one exception, though. A fanfic series which I do like and in which there is eventually a sexual aspect to the relationship as well. I guess the reason why I don't mind here is that the sex isn't the be-all and end-all, nor the solution to anything, just one more aspect, and anyway the focus of the series of stories in question is the relationship that developes between Frodo, Rosie and Sam during "A Pretty Good Year", the year between the Hobbits' return to the Shire and Frodo's departure. monkeycrackmary took the rather shadowy Rosie from Tolkien's novel and made her into one of the most endearing characters I've got the pleasure to read about in fanfic, and all without straying into Mary Sue territory which really must have been tempting considering the constellation she deals with.

Lastly, a passage from Tolkien himself. ( Because. )

And also because it's one of my favourite scenes, and was one of his, according to his letters.


-- Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee - but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.
LOTR, The Two Towers, "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol"