Greetings all,

If you know me, good. If you don't, better. That is my philosophy when it comes to my writing. I've been reading on this site since 2001. Deleted my old account in 2006 (didn't like the name and lost track of the account info). Created this one in 2008.

As of 12/28/2012

2012 Reflections

As I was talking to a friend I realized that I have been watching this site grow in the past ten years and that it is still growing at a phenomenal rate. I wanted to stop for a moment to reflect on how the site has grown and why it continues to do so.

People love the idea of fandom; that they can take a story and and extend its life. Characters we become attached to, much like heroes in ballads of old, stay with us. We learned the values of supporting our friends and lending help in times of need from these characters. The stories have even helped us when we were at our lowest by showing us things could be worse and we would still find a way to survive. The characters grew up with us and we want their lives to continue as we experience what they experienced and then in turn want to see them experience what we would have.

In the late 90s and early 2000 era, stores, even some secular ones, began selling WWJD beads, the "What would Jesus do?" beads (My grandmother once gave me a bracelet of them, and they went the same path as every piece of jewelry I have ever owned: lost to the ages). In similar spirit fanfics have become our beads of this generation, but not in a religious way. What would Harry Potter do? What would Frodo do? What would Naruto do? What would the Easter Bunny do? We think of these characters and the lessons they taught us in our formative years and we wonder how they would handle situations we encounter in our lives and imaginations.

I discovered this site in early 2001, which was during a very awkward social time for me. About one or two years prior I had been introduced to the recently released Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by my fourth grade Latin teacher. I fell in love with the story, and read all the books in the same week my aunt bought them for me. This voracious period of reading was followed by an overwhelming feeling of absolute impatience, joy, and anger. What can I say, puberty was a bitch. Self-history aside, I stumbled upon this site when I was in my school's library probably searching for what people thought of the recently released fourth Harry Potter book. Wow, I just dated myself.

I was enthralled. Here was a chance to not only guess what would happen next but to see how people envision it. Fanfiction also had an original story category that people could develop original ideas after they piggy-backed on another author's canon. Poetry was a neglected category that the occasional cyber-paleolithic internet troll would post weird haikus in, and song-fics ran rampant. Of course that all changed in the next five-years. The original story section became fiction press after too many people started posting fanfics in it that didn't have a story category at the time. Song-fics became banned because... well, they were illegal. Poetry just never took of as a neglected category, but became a neglected genre instead. Cross-over categories were introduced to keep each category from becoming ether-goop. The developers organized the site and prettied it up. The logo went from a lightbulb to a letter stamp, and soon the site became an internet force. It is one of the oldest and most organized creative writing sites on the internet, and I am quite proud to be a part of it.

So thank you FanFiction.net, I appreciate that your team has helped to keep my life nerdy for the past 10 years.

I figure if I am going to complain about the condition of the HP/LotR crossover section, I may as well make my demands known. I name the challenge after Morwen Steelsheen of the Tolkein legendarium, who was the mother to King Theoden of Rohan and grandmother of Eowyn and Eomer of Rohan

Steelsheen Challenge Version 2.0

Rules:

- A/some character/s of HP cannon (Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, Proffesor Trelawney, Gilderoy Lockart, Severus Snape, etc.) must enter Middle Earth as a human wizard and stay a human wizard for the duration of his or her stay in Middle Earth

- No Ships outside of LotR cannon

- The character can take only three items into Middle-Earth, and no cheating with mokeskin pouches, Hermione's bottomless evening bag, items that reach into the Potterverse to retrieve more items, or trunks. Animals are acceptable, cauldrons are acceptable, pogs and jacks are acceptable, as well as books that are prone to eating people, but no one is limited to these items.

- HP cannon character only knows how to communicate in one of the languages of Middle-Earth (Westron, Rohirric, Quenya, Sindarin, Khuzdul, Entish, Valarin, Black Speech, Orcish, etc)

- Please put "Steelsheen Challenge" in the summary.

Bonus Points:

- HP cannon character enters Middle Earth east of the Misty Mountains

- HP cannon character does not understand any of the languages of Middle-Earth (see above list)

- Chapter length is over 4,000 words

Outside of that, anything (and I do mean anything) goes. Bonus is not necessary to complete the challenge successfully, but is stuff I personally would like to see. Please PM me with questions or to ell me if you are doing this.