Other World That Aren't Ours

mirabellawotr wrote this post on her lj about disturbing trends in LOTR fic and clearly it needed to be said! What's better is that it's sparked a lot of good discussion on what Tolkien's world and characters are, as opposed to what they are not, and what prompts people to write fanfic that way. I'm somebody who basically thinks everyone has the right to write whatever they want even if I wish they had never ever put pen to paper. Iow, I can't stop them. Fanfic is always going to draw people who want to deal with their own issues through the characters and since you're dealing with many amateur and bad writers, it may not even occur to them that they're supposed to be sticking to canon beyond the most basic stuff.

( But what is it about LOTR that inspires a certain kind of fic? )

p.s. I just lost a filling from a tooth that was nearly all filling to begin with. This is so not cool.