hmpf

Readers of this journal are beginning to ask if I’ve fallen off the face of the earth. Rest assured that I haven’t, but I’ve been busy. Or rather, I’ve been to Denmark, where there wasn’t any internet access (not that I expected any), and when I came back I got busy, and busy *partying*, of all things. I know too many people with August birthdays – myself included.

But first, let me get back to my holiday in Denmark. In keeping with my tradition of focusing on fannish stuff in this journal, I’ll focus on the fannish side of it. Inspired by the heavenly quiet and the beautiful countryside I wrote quite a lot – revised some finished stories, continued my attempt at killing off Methos, and started writing the sequel to Rise and Shine, The Breakfast of Losers. Besides that, I read a few books for uni, among them Science Fiction Audiences by Henry Jenkins and John Tulloch. I also took long walks on the beach with my friend Anne, indoctrinating her about Hellsing. ;-)
Oh, and I had dreams, lots of them, and silly ones, too! One of them was a little prophetic. For lack of time and space, I’ll just list them here:

- going Elephant hunting with DK and Froonium Ricky in some jungle, and talking about it on the Holyground Highlander Forum afterwards (Why not on some Farscape forum, you ask? Well, don’t ask me, ask my subconscious!)
- the Moya crew driving in a very small car, and D’Argo and John getting into a brawl about who should be allowed to drive; D’Argo winning, and John being forced to ride along on a small tricicle. (That was the prophetic dream – compare with the turnout of Natural Election, which I hadn’t seen, nor read spoilers about, when I dreamed this!)
- some friends of mine and Alucard doing mysterious things involving birthday presents in a destroyed city
- Methos as the villain in a computer game about nuclear smuggling

What can I say – my subconscious is a strange and bewildering place.

Well, so much for Denmark. I had a very nice time there, but I have so much still to report here that I can’t dwell on details...

Back from Denmark, I had about three days to get ready for a cluster of birthday parties and other social events. I spent my own birthday celebrating Anne’s birthday (her birthday is one day after mine, and she had decided to have her party on the eve of her birthday), then was picked up next noon by two fellow German Tolkien society members, as of that time still unknown to me, to go to the 4. annual Tolkien Thing. Although I had felt slightly uneasy about driving there with two guys I didn’t know, the two turned out to be very pleasant company, and the journey had the unexpected side effect of acquainting me with the music of Blind Guardian, a German metal band heavily influenced by Tolkien’s writings. We listened to Nightfall in Middle-earth, the band’s version of the Silmarillion, and I was much surprised to find that I liked it! Tobias and Christian were so pleased with their successful attempt at making me appreciate metal that they gave me the CD when we separated, two days later. :-)

I’ll go into some detail now describing the Thing. (English speakers beware: this is not an English word but an old Germanic one - I don’t know which Germanic language it comes from -, describing a formal meeting. The old Icelandic parliament was called a Thing, for example. The German translation of The Lord of the Rings uses this word for the Entmoot.) I always greatly enjoy such fan events, but I usually am too lazy to write a report on them afterwards, but I want to write one this time, and a complete one, if possible.

Allright, back to me and Christian and Tobias in the car, on our way to Marienthal monastery. After the initial shyness had subsided, I found out that this was to be their first Thing, and that Christian knew the MacSlow website, which gave me a kinda creepy feeling – I hadn’t realized you could already find MacSlow just by doing a Google search for my e-mail! Well, I guess a certain amount of visibility is the price you pay for a few years of net activity, and MacSlow is not exactly a top secret site! ;-) We also found out we had a common acquaintance, Anke Eißmann, whose paintings are currently my favourite Tolkien illustrations (actually, I was recently given a print of her Flight to the Ford for my birthday). Christian has a nice Tolkien art site, and Anke is one of the few artists he deems worthy to grace his pages. ;-)

My claims that I didn’t know too many people in the society yet was immediately proven wrong when I was greeted by about three or four people right upon arriving. I had underestimated the amount of people I‘d met at the previous three German Tolkien events I’d attended over the last one and a half years...

We were handed our keys and name tags, and the next hour or so were spent idling near the reception point, greeting people who arrived, and talking with those one recognized. I quickly became aware I already knew a *lot* of people in the society, although I had only been to one Thing before, and a vague feeling of sympathy and familiarity began to pervade me – a feeling I should retain well into mundane Monday. Little by little everybody arrived, Anke and her friends turning stars of the afternoon in their too-cool-for-words black ‘Support the Stewards of Gondor‘ t-shirts – I want one of those! (Cryptic enough to confuse mundanes, and very funny to those in the know...)

Roughly 90 members of the Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft, the German Tolkien society, had assembled that weekend to discuss and celebrate and mingle, which indicates a staggering growth of the society in the four years of its existence – the first Thing had some 17 or so participants, I am told. I’ve been a member since January 2001, and this was my second Thing.

There was no programming that evening, just a short welcome speech at dinner. After dinner there was the annual general meeting of the society where we got to hold up little red and green voting cards a lot and talked about legal matters and other formal stuff resulting from our being an official kind of organization.

After all those matters had been settled we repaired to the cellar bar. There, Lindir impressed us by turning up in an authentic costume, including a horn for drinking and one for blowing, and a hand-made clasp, and by walking bare-foot – I think he only put his shoes back on when the weekend was over! The group I spent most of the evening with consisted mainly of Anke, her friends Marie and Jenny, Christian and Tobias, Silene, and Lindir. Well, and myself, of course. In the course of the evening I discovered Tobias had quite enjoyed Farscape when it was still on the air, and with little effort convinced him to come to the Farscape mailing list meeting in September. Later that night Anke and Lindir started their usual little reading circle, while I was (as always) still a little too shy to read my favourite parts of the book out aloud. Maybe next time...

We went to bed around four a.m., I think.

The next morning I had some trouble getting out of bed, and only just managed to be up for breakfast. After breakfast there was a lecture by Arwen Rhíwiel about Sindarin, which was reasonably enlightening, telling me mostly that learning Sindarin is probably even tougher than learning Latin... I guess I’ll not try it anytime soon! About a fourth or a third of the listeners were already in costume, which made me think about the stuff I’d brought in the hope of being able to improvise some sort of costume from it. So, I withdrew to my room and started improvising... and returned to the fray in a somewhat satisfactory attempt at a costume fashioned from a skirt, blouse, shawl, and a tunic-like coarse shirt. Then I found someone to braid some strings of beads into my hair (later, when I got annoyed with the braid, I removed them and pinned them to the shawl I wore around my hips). Thus attired, I spent some time browsing René van Rossenberg’s Tolkien shop, and then we all had lunch.

After lunch Olwe, our chairman (or whatever you call the leader of an organization such as ours) had a second try at having a discussion about the role of women in The Lord of the Rings – the first attempt failed due to lack of participants at this year’s Tolkien-Fest. This time, maybe because as members of a literary society we are a slightly different crowd from the majority of Tolkien-Fest guests, there was no lack of participants, and we had quite a nice discussion that of course soon drifted to some of Olwe’s favourite subjects, the depiction of Tolkien fans in the media etc. We also discussed the appeal The Lord of the Rings holds for female readers. (There were more female members present at this year‘s Thing than at last year’s, I think.) The discussion, by the way, took place on a veranda that reminded many of us immediately of the Council of Elrond... an impression that was intensified by the fact that at least a third of the participants were in costume, and for the most part in costumes of a high quality. (I really need to get a real costume for next year...)

Later that afternoon there was another lecture, this time by Frank Weinreich, who talked about Tolkien and ‘fairy tales‘. This was followed by one of Maksatan’s trademark difficult quizzes, in which colourful groups such as the People’s Front of Gondor et al. competed... I gave up following the quiz after a while, when I realized I hadn’t even the slightest idea of the replies to the questions, and retired to my room for a little while. When I returned, I ran into Olwe in René’s shop and suggested to him several crazy ideas I’d just had – notably, that I might lead a ring making workshop next year, and that we might try and have a whole week of Tolkien-related workshops sometime – a workshop for costumers, another one for people wanting to learn the basics of metalworking, another for making Tolkien music etc. I still think this a good idea, but I also realize it is a little utopian.

That conversation was overheard by Gerandalf the White, a journalist from Thuringia, who happened to have similar plans, but on a grander scale. He wants to convince a little town in Thuringia to let their currently vacant medieval castle to Tolkien fans for cultural activities just like the one I had just suggested to Olwe. We talked a bit and he gave me his card.

In the evening there was a barbecue in the garden. Apparently, the kitchen hadn’t expected 90 people with hobbit appetites, so the food was gone pretty soon, but we still had a nice time. As a vegetarian, I was served something that tasted suspicously like compressed wood shavings, but thinking of Frodo and Sam’s ordeal in Mordor makes eating almost *anything* easy by comparison. ;-) I changed tables during dinner and ended up at Anke’s table who promptly enlisted me for a bit of impromptu theatre: I was to play a small part in a parody of the Council of Elrond later in the evening! Usually I’m too nervous in front of large accumulations of people to even consider a thing like that, but by Saturday evening the company of other fans had worked its magic on me sufficiently for me to relax, and so I agreed. Hence, we had half an hour or so of rehearsal, and a great deal of fun during that, and then went to search for a few things to perfect our costumes. I, as Elrond, got a circlet of twisted toilet paper and alumnium foil, our Gandalf got a pointed hat (borrowed from a ‘real‘ Gandalf, i.e. someone who had been wearing a perfect Gandalf costume all day), and our Aragorn got a sword (borrowed from the same Gandalf). Frodo, who was played by a rucksack (Baggins!) since he didn’t have anything to say in the scene, got a wig and, of course, a chain with a ring (there was no shortage of those that weekend!).

After a little bit of hairdressing – our ‘dwarves‘, Lindir and Jenny, who played Gloin and Gimli, got beards by tieing their long hair beneath their chins, and Silene put some funny knots and pieces of aluminum foil into my hair to make me appear more Elrond-like – the rest of the Thing-participants trooped in, and the ‘show‘ began! Well, not quite, that is – before our turn came, there were some other talented society members who displayed their skills, namely Tindomerel, who had prepared two choreographies titled Narya and Nienna, and two Russian filkers whose names I have unfortunately forgotten. The Russian duo were very nice. They were very new yet to filking, and in fact didn’t even know that the kind of music they were making was called filk. They sang us some Russian Tolkien filk, almong other songs, and I was delighted, because that was actually the first time I’d heard filk live. I’ve known since I did some researching into filk a few months ago that there was a very active Russian filk scene, especially for Tolkien-themed filk, but I’d never heard any Russian filk before.

After the musical part of the evening we took the stage... I was so nervous I couldn’t stop shaking! Still, I tried to do my best, but my efforts at presenting a serious and dignified Elrond were botched up by Lindir who, as Gloin, had inserted a surprise visual gag into his performance: when he started furiously flicking his ‘beard‘ in his opponents‘ direction, I couldn’t stay *quite* serious. Still, I managed to deliver my two or three lines, and the whole scene was a success with the audience. I particularly enjoyed ‘Frodo‘ being shouldered by Aragorn who left the Council in frustration... and ‘Gloin‘‘s beard-flicking, of course!

After that, part of the crowd dispersed to spend the rest of the evening in the cellar bar, while a few people remained to watch the Two Towers special from the new Fellowship DVD. This was followed by a re-watching of the first movie, of course, and so I got to see the movie for the eighth time... Agitated by Anke‘s ‘stewards of Gondor‘ t-shirts, the audience cheered when Boromir claimed that ‘Gondor has no king, Gondor needs no king‘, and after the movie was over, we rerun parts of it to search for (in)famous movie mistakes... As on the evening before, I went to bed around four a.m. or so.

Likewise, I found it every bit as difficult as on Saturday to turn up in time for breakfast, but somehow managed not to miss too much of the lecture on archery directly afterwards. I learned that some of the bows and arrows used in the movie are completely impractical for actual shooting, and that Tolkien didn’t specify much regarding archery in his books. After the lecture the group was divided for two sessions of shooting, one before lunch and one after. I was in the afternoon group, and so had to kill some time until then, which I did by hanging around the entrance area talking with people. I was carrying volume seven of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series in my hand because I hadn’t been able to fit it into my backpack, and the book immediately sparked several conversations – I wasn’t the only Sandman fan around! I continued the Sandman conversation through lunch, where I was recommended several other American comics, and then got ready for my shooting lesson.

Friedhelm Schneidewind, author of a voluminous Tolkien encyclopedia, awaited us on a stretch of grass at the back of the monastery. There, we took turns shooting his two lightest longbows (25 pounds and 35 pounds respectively; I only managed to use the 25 pound one, lacking the strength for the other). It was a curious feeling, strapping on the armguard and putting the arrow on the string... – I felt like a bunch of orcs might come around the corner any moment! The bow was taller than I...
I proved a terrible shot, by the way, but still I enjoyed the experience so much I even took part in the little tournament we had afterwards, of course making the last place. I had a hard time even hitting the straw sack we used for a target.

Well, after the tournament there wasn’t much time left. Some people had already left, and the remaining were assembled one last time in the meeting hall to give feedback about the weekend. After that – the feedback given was overwhelmingly positive – everybody said goodbye to everybody else, and we left. As always on such occasions, I was both elated by the experience, and sad at its end...

Back in the car with Tobias and Christian, we listened some more to Blind Guardian while heading southwards. The two of them had enjoyed the Thing very much, and Tobias was already planning to get a costume for next year. Then, back in Frankfurt, they gave me the Blind Guardian CD, I gave them all of my Farscape CDs (Tobias promised to bring them to the mailing list meeting in September), and we had pizza at the restaurant around the corner, all of us exhausted but happy.

Before it slips my mind, I should also mention, perhaps, the curious gratification I felt over a little exchange of words on Saturday evening. I had sneezed, and Christian had asked me, consequently, if I were pregnant. I was able to reply ‘Do I look like a Bajoran?‘, thus marking myself a consummate geek, because only a real geek would remember that Bajoran women (from Star Trek Deep Space Nine) sneeze when pregnant. This little exchange captures the essence of fan meetings for me: a fan meeting gives me the opportunity to meet people of similar tastes and interests, with similar, to outsiders often arkane, knowledge – people I can, by displaying the appropriate kind of knowledge and behaviour, feel connected with. I find it very easy to make contacts at a fan weekend. I can talk easily and openly to almost anybody, a thing I find hard to do under more normal circumstances. I feel a sense of community that I never expected to feel in my life. For the longest part of my life, I have considered myself a natural outsider, unable to connect with any group of people. Now I find that I was mistaken – a somewhat confusing realization, because my self-image was built in large part on that idea of absolute uniqueness and loneliness. Suddenly now I am realizing I am by no means unique, that there are lots and lots of people who are very similar to me. We are not exactly mainstream, but neither are we totally alone. And the strangest thing about this is that I don’t mind, on the contrary: I enjoy being part of this group, and that also is something I never thought I would be able to say in my life.

Well... I guess I should also give an account of my birthday party here, the first one in nine years, and the first one ever with so many guests (over twenty!), but I’m too tired now, and I don’t want to withhold this entry another day. Also, I have some e-mails to write tomorrow, ‘cause lots of people have been waiting a long time to hear from me... writing this journal entry here took me three evenings, three evenings on which I was not able to reply to any of my e-mails, and before that, I couldn’t write any e-mails because I was either busy preparing my birthday, or busy going to parties, or because I was at the Tolkien-Thing, or because I was in Denmark. To everyone who is waiting for a mail from me and who may be reading this: I haven’t forgotten you guys! Please forgive me the long wait...

I suspect this is teeming with mistakes, but I’m too tired now to check it again, and I don’t want to wait another day before posting it... so it’ll have to go up, mistakes and all, now.