I'm in love with Middle-earth again

[anghraine]

I've spent the weekend glutting myself on Tolkien-related things -- not only "Child of Hope," which I wrote about yesterday, and "The Hunt for Gollum," which I watched today, but reviews and old essays and the Tor readings and ... well, things.  It's surreal:  I've always thought of myself as part of Tolkien fandom, but honestly, I haven't been.  I got absorbed in Austen and Potter fandoms, started taking 400-level classes, and kind of lost track of it all.

So I realised that it'd been years since I was this involved in anything Middle-earth, and thought, "Huh, I wonder whatever happened to Emyn Arnen?"

For those who don't know (and again, probably don't care), Emyn Arnen is a Faramir/Éowyn fic archive and, formerly, a forum for Middle-earth discussion, which IIRC focussed on Éowyn (sometimes) and Faramir (usually) but mostly meandered about -- we were largely our own moderators.  I lurked there for what seemed like ages, before finally delurking to rant about Philippa Boyens' remarks about Faramir. 

It was the first place I ever posted, the first community I was ever involved with, the first place I ever posted fanfic, etc etc.  And I was pretty heavily involved for awhile, mostly in long (often very long) discussions with nestashouse  and rakshathedemon , and later cressidarambles .  Eventually we drifted to (as you can see) lj, and Brothers of Gondor, and -- I don't really know what happened to the other EA-people next.  And today, when I wandered over to see what had happened in the last four years or whatever, I found that the forums were gone.

Thankfully, the Wayback Machine saved them -- for the present.  And these things are like mini-essays, posted on everything between ... well, to give you an idea, here are some of the topic threads:

-- Faramir and the Ring
-- Denethor
-- what Elves do with their time
-- canonicity of the History of Middle-earth books
-- Middle-earth kingship
-- the Silmarillion
-- Arwen (book version)
-- the last battle
-- Éomer and Boromir
-- the half-elves
-- maternal uncles and nephews
-- Mardil the Good Steward
-- purist ranting about the movies
-- purist ranting about the movies (2)
-- purist ranting about the movies (3)
-- purist ranting about the movies (4 -- my babies!  I'm so proud.)
-- Éowyn and Éomer
-- Éowyn's literacy
-- Éowyn and feminism
-- Éowyn's ancestry
-- Faramir and kingship
-- Faramir and Boromir
-- Faramir and Aragorn
-- Faramir's beardlessness
-- Faramir in the movies
-- Faramir's death
-- Faramir's name
-- Faramir and Lothíriel
-- Faramir's flaws (or lack thereof)
-- Faramir and Éomer
-- Faramir and Beregond
-- Éowyn and Faramir as parents
-- Éowyn and Faramir's marriage
-- Faramir and Éowyn's cousinship

It might be interesting to explore some of those things again.  Even in a limited way.  At the very least, I'd like to save them before they're completely gone.  I expect a number of Middle-earth posts in the near future, even if they're just reposts.

So, uh -- sorry, Austen fandom!  I know I've been drifting away, but -- um, when the epic mood comes, you just can't fulfill all my needs.  (Or the realist mood either, but at least I can complain about that.)  I might even add Young Wizards and make it a foursome.