I am a hobbit, living a quiet, almost respectable life in a comfortable hole. Almost idyllic, if there were no such things as work e-mails at odd hours, invoices to write, slugs in strawberries and unexpected (or long-expected) visits. I was warned not to admit wandering wizards and dwarves: who knows what may happen?

I love reading - those very few stories (in my own language) that I have produced over the years had probably perished with my first computer. I am here as a reader, and a rather picky reader at that. I read the Lord of the Rings more than twenty years ago and it is still the book number one (in fiction) for me: so, for now I mostly read the fan fiction in this category.

*I*I*

As a translator, I am a strong believer in CANON: a translation cannot significantly alter its source and remain a good translation... and I believe that the same goes for fan fiction as well. A good fan fiction has to respect canon or at least justify differences. For example, there might have been an evil Elrond if he took the Ring instead of Isildur... but not "just because". Alternatively, the writing may be of such a high quality as to establish a new canon. I remember a HP fanfic that was actually more interesting than the original books...

When I read a fan fiction story, it is because I love characters and universe created by a specific author: I want to see more of them and I am not interested in seeing them twisted BEYOND RECOGNITION. No 10th walkers or races more powerful than Ainur, no xenophobic Elrond or something similarly outrageous (no movieverse for me, thank you very much). Also, there is no reason to excuse arbitrary slash: while there are (admittedly very few) fanfics where this motive seems justified enough by the internal rules of those stories, generally it looks rather stupid to make the known characters with known preferences randomly fall in love one with another in strangest combinations. Not to say disrespectful to the author.

Please, when you are not happy to play by the rules established by the author for his universe, do not write fan fiction, create an original story with original characters. Or, at the very least, give proper warnings and ratings. As a reader, I am rather tired of having to sift through mud to find gold nuggets. Although, those gold nuggets are well worth it.

*I*I*I*

I admire all those authors, whose stories are clicked as my favorite and many who are not: I ceased to click stories as favorites when I was persuaded that I should better try to review first: clicking a story as a favorite was too easy. But sometimes it is difficult to return to such a story, some are lost for me until I find them again by chance... I would like to THANK all of YOU for a wonderful job. I promise now that I will try to go back to all those unreviewed stories, because you all deserve it.