cool LOTR quiz

How well do you know your LOTR characters? Specifically how often they're named in the text?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/59959/name-top-50-lord-rings-characters-number-mentions

Basically you type in the names (sans diacriticals as far as I can tell) and try to get as many as you can within a certain timeframe. I managed forty-five of the fifty but some of them were much trickier than you'd think. I'm not too ashamed of the fact I missed (put behind a cut for the folks taking the quiz themselves) Hamfast Gamgee, Ugluk, Durin, Arathorn, and Gorbag - with the exception of the Dunedain one that I really should have typed in and am half convinced I did (typo, maybe?), those aren't omissions I have any right to be embarrassed over missing.

things I've been reading

... and liked enough to want to point out to you guys. Check them out if it's your thing.

(1) The Cleverness of Me by Solshine. A charming BBC Sherlock story where Sherlock is Peter Pan and Mycroft one of the Lost Boys, right up until the point they aren't. I want to write a full review when I find the time, but this one definitely comes with the Marta seal of approval.

(2) Kindred Spirits by daasgrrl. The author describes it as "Character study with a side order of porn, or possibly the other way around." And really, it should not be possible to combine PWP (or erotica, if it has too much other stuff to qualify for that label) with casefic in the same damned scene, yet here we are. Holmescest, and explicit at that, but so well-written I was thinking about it and blushing inappropriately (or just lost in thought over said "other stuff") at random intervals for two days afterwards.

(3) Sherlock, Sally and Otherness. A BBC Sherlock meta about Sally Donovan and Sherlock, the way they are an "other" on the outskirts of respectable character types, and the way they manage the risks that involves. Very thought-provoking stuff.

(4) Shampoo is Dead, Long Live Shampoo. A bit of a look at the product's history.

(5) The First Pap Smears Were Done on Drunk Guinea Pigs. For once, that article title isn't at all clickbait or misleading. Gloriously so, really.

I also mentioned it over at Tumblr, but I've recently discovered a really charming and clever Mrs. Hudson-centric, Victorian!Sherlock comic. The Adventures of Mrs. Hudson by Aristofranes. RSS here for folks who aren't regularly on Tumblr.

I've also been writing a bit about my reaction to BBC Sherlock over at Tumblr, so if you're interested in that check out my meta tag. Specifically, there's been a bit of grousing about Moffat and series three, talking about Mycroft in the script fragments released in Sherlock Chronicles, more series three grousing, and some reaction to the deleted series three scene, in that order starting with the most recent.

(no subject)

Apparently it's the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Berlin Wall's being torn down. I can't bring myself to say the "fall," both because I'm a Sherlockian and that word has the same kind of double connotation as "precious" does to a Tolkien fan, but also because "fall" is passive. Saying the Wall "came down" misses the point, too, for me. This was a human achievement coming out of some very hard work and real risks.

I was too young to really have it mean anything to me at the time. It was maybe eighteen months after my first visit to Germany and six months before my second. But I remember the look on my grandmother's face on that second visit, when she finally got to see her cousins again (they'd been caught on the wrong side of the Wall after World War II), and I remember how moved my uncle (really, more a father-figure) Chris was because his uncle's family had been caught on the wrong side of the Wall and he had cousins he'd never even met and now he could get to know them. That's what the Wall and its being torn down means to me. Reunification, in every sense possible.

But really, I was just a id, and while I was quickly finding myself a home with Germans, I don't think I yet knew Germany, certainly not the Germany before the Wall was torn down, enough to have been moved by it at that level. So I won't pretend to speak for other peoples' experience. (juno_magic has some nice reminiscences, and I'm sure other people do too.) But I do know lots of you are German and I hope the anniversary is a meaningful one, if you were affected by this event.