Oh, PLEASE, PMM. I will make you a songvid to "That's the way (uh huh uh huh) I like it (uh huh uh huh)" which is the scene with the necklace looped over and over again.

Gimli ain't got nothing on Aragorn.

If you make me think about Gimli naked then you'll have to write me something really twisted and dark to make up for it!

Okay, now I'm curious, having gotten my LoTR OTP out of the way, for you plotty writers/readers, what is it you like to read outside of fanfiction? What turns your lit crank?

Because I know damned well that I slide into the big, thick, all about human interaction, not really about what goes on around except as a catalyst for the aforementioned interaction. (See: Anna K, and my Vronsky's Teeth obsession, or the utter thrall that The Winter Rose holds me in, where while I like the STORY in LoTR, the writing bores me to tears, because there's too much external, not enough internal.)

Oh, PLEASE, PMM. I will make you a songvid to "That's the way (uh huh uh huh) I like it (uh huh uh huh)" which is the scene with the necklace looped over and over again.

I never said Legolas was faithful. An elf has needs.

PMM: I'm a fan of magical realism. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jim Dodge. Also Stone Mountain I'd recommend to anyone.

Pretty much anything by Christopher Brookmyer if you like a laugh.

Best to keep in mind that Terry Pratchett is God. Don't want to mess with the big man.

Let's see the last fiction stuff I read was the latest Jonathan Kellerman, Tipping the Velvet, I'm currently reading Fingersmith and this book Gilgamesh by an Australian author, I'm still trying to get through my stack of unreads that I've bought.

One author I really love is Isabel Allende even though I haven't finished Daughter of Fortune. Love Anne Tyler.

Oh, I finished up American Gods, and reread bits of Smoke and Mirrors.

There are markers in: Lovecraft, An Artist of the Floating World, Crime and Punishment (never read before), Moby Dick (never read all before), and Great Expectations.

Ack! Terry Pratchett! I keep forgetting to figure out the sequence of Discworld so I can start getting them from the library.

I keep telling myself No More FICTION from the library until I get fiinished with the backlog but I'm weak...

I look for fiction about -- generally -- people who are fucked-up and yet manage to find...not redemption, that's not the situation I mean, but a sense of peace, or being settled in the world with their fucked-upped-ness.

Does that make sense?

Basically, thematically, how shit can grow gorgeous flowers.

Have any of the recent articles mentioned Clark/Lex?

You know, I was kind of suprised that the article in Bitch didn't mention them at all. Mulder/Skinner, Janeway/Seven, Buffy/Willow, and Kirk/Spock are the pairings I remember being referenced.

Asking why people in general write slash or anything else is going to get you dozens of different answers. I don't mind the question, myself -- what gets me uncomfortable is when someone who doesn't write tries to answer it -- or when a writer tries to answer for all writers. That never ends well. We all have our own reasons for writing, and those reasons may change over time, and from show to show.

This was actually the thing I liked about the article - she didn't try to give one absolute answer about what people find so appealing about slash. She acknowledged that for every reader and writer the reasons would be different.

For the most part, slash isn't really my cup of tea. I've enjoyed Anna S.'s recent Spike/Xander stories, and Mulder/Krycek will always have a special place in my heart, and I have a major soft spot for a well written Buffy/Faith, but I usually prefer het or gen. And I've come to accept that it's not because I'm homophobic, or narrow-minded, or unimaginitive. I just have different storytelling kinks.

See the thing with American Gods, as much as Neil is a hero ... Terry Pratchett kicked his ass black and blue with Small Gods.
He did it first, better, and funnier.

And with no slash. :-p