Oshun's Journal

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Happy Birthday to j_dav
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Art: Maglor by the sea by Filat

Have a terrific birthday!

Happy Birthday, amaranth_5

From East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Kay Nielsen
(Click and click for larger. It's much nicer large!)

Something about the fine details and the fabric in this painting made me think of you. Hope you have a pampered, lovely day.

Happy Birthday, just_ann_now!!
A little early, but I might not be able to get on the computer before mid-day tomorrow or later.

I love this picture. (Crop of artwork by Juan Romero. Click for larger.)

It could be Alec’s view out his window onto Riverside after consuming a little too much Fool’s Delight. Those would not be fireworks but the stars that he is seeing. No doubt Richard is annoyed at him for taking it and slightly worried about how he might behave when he crashes. Meanwhile, Richard might want to just relax and take advantage of his altered reality while it lasts.

( Swordspoint drabble: Hallucinations )

* * * *

I could have just written that I do adore Richard and Alec. But warts and all here it is. Have a happy, happy birthday!

Happy Birthday, two_point
I wanted to find a really amazing picture for your birthday greeting and I wasted an incredible amount of time looking. Stuck with my first choice after all of that--a beautiful lady on a horse and my icon of Glorfindel.

(The fact that she is naked was not part of my original conception.) Oh, well. (I am wondering if that picture is the same one used by Godiva chocolates. I'm not sure. Probably not.)

Anyway, have a great day.

The No-I-am-NOT-doing-NaNoWriMo Post
Yay, me! Anyway, I wrote nothing today. Unlikely I will write anything tonight. Maybe tomorrow?

A Good Weekend ( Read on. )

Have a great birthday, lenine2

Hope it is a terrific day!

Two lost weekends running one right after another . . .
My biggest blocks of writing time are Saturday and Sunday. Because Laura keeps Baby Fingon out-of-my-hair in a way that Gabriel doesn’t know how to do. He wanders into my work space and puts a couple of Thomas trains in front of the keyboard and says: “Look, Gramma! Chu-chu train!” I am such a sap. It works when he talks to me, especially if he says “please.” If chu-chu doesn’t work, he requests to see my Merlin and Arfur pics on my harddrive: “Pleez. Arfur! Merlin! Fotos! Pleez!” ( Read on. )

For fans of the Adrien English mystery series
Great opportunity: Josh Lanyon (

jgraeme2007) posted an entry on his LJ today, “If you could ask Jake or Adrien any question...”

Keep me company. Go for it!

Happy Birthday, athousandwinds
Hope you have a terrific birthday.

Coriolanus, bas-relief by Anne Seymour Damer

Haven’t heard a lot from you recently, but hope springs eternal.

Fannish Friday 5 - erase five characters
If you could erase five characters from any fandom, who would you choose?

The Silmarillion – Turin Turambar (Just shoot him early on and put him out of his misery before he screws up so many other people). Unmitigated tragedy that is not set against at least a smidgen of contrasting happiness is a deadly bore to me.

Lord of the Rings – Tom Bombadil Oh, lordy! Do I really need to explain? "Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!/ Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow! Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!" He is just a long, annoying distraction and an example of heavy-handed didacticism.

BBC Merlin – Gwen Don’t want to start any shipper/flame wars here, but so far I think the her storyline really stinks and only gets worse. At this point I don’t trust the writers to fix it.

Wraeththu – Ysobi in The Hienama and The Student of Khyme. Erase him? Not really, because I like the storyline. It is more that I love to hate him in this instance. I just want to slap him cross-eyed every time he opens his mouth.

Mary Renault’s The Charioteer – Aunt Olive She is portrayed in a manner that skirts dangerously close to parody. No doubt there were plenty of women like her in that period and of that social class, but I don’t enjoy reading about her. Apologies to anyone who had an Aunt Olive in their life whom they dearly loved.

Happy Birthday, whitewave16

Art: "Lirazel Blows Away" by Oliver Hunter

Hope you have a terrific day!

Birthday greetings, mrs_leary
You popped up on my birthday list today! Hope you have a great day. So nice to have met someone who shares my obsession for a certain young actor and is also a kick-ass writer.

Oh, and click to make it bigger.

Following friends on this one.
I swear I did not lie or cheat. Go figure... It sounds much too--er--strong I guess to be me.

You are Strength

Courage, strength, fortitude. Power not arrested in the act of judgement, but passing on to further action, sometimes obstinacy.

This is a card of courage and energy. It represents both the Lion's hot, roaring energy, and the Maiden's steadfast will. The innocent Maiden is unafraid, undaunted, and indomitable. In some cards she opens the lion's mouth, in others she shuts it. Either way, she proves that inner strength is more powerful than raw physical strength. That forces can be controlled and used to score a victory is very close to the message of the Chariot, which might be why, in some decks, it is Justice that is card 8 instead of Strength. With strength you can control not only the situation, but yourself. It is a card about anger and impulse management, about creative answers, leadership and maintaining one's personal honor. It can also stand for a steadfast friend.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Happy Birthday, minuial_nuwing

Sheherazade, illustration by Edmund Dulac

Sheherazade seemed like a terrific choice for you: a woman of exceptional intelligence, wisdom and many stories. Hope you have a fabulous birthday. (A few hours early with this greeting to make sure I don’t miss it!)

The Last of the Wine, Mary Renault
Today I am hosting the discussion of chapters six and seven of Mary Renault’s The Last of Wine.

Please come over and read my summary and share in the discussion.

What's up with me now (it's always something)!
I am still limited in my access to the internet. A couple of days after we hooked up cable in the house, Laura and Gabriel’s computer crashed. It’s dead! No resuscitation possible. So now I have hooked up mine for an indefinite period of time in their little office where the cable connection is (next to their bedroom). So I have a connection and hours of access, but not necessarily at my convenience. It’s complicated and boring to explain. But there are other things to tell y’all. ( Read on. )

Merlin fic rec - In Want of a Wife by Syllic

lilithlessfair has been nagging me to read this story for quite some time--told me about it during the period when I did not have regular internet access for almost a month. Finally got around to it yesterday and it is a delight.

In Want of A Wife ( Read my rave review here. )

Current Mood: chipper

Happy, happy Birthday to Dawn Felagund.
Hope you have the best of birthdays! Just thinking tonight of what a great friend you have been and not to mention such a muse! Your Another Man's Cage is still the single fanfic that turned around my own fanfic writing. So this birthday greeting features some of its most memorable characters (all pics by Lomacchi).

Click it for bigger!

Thank you, thrihyrne, for the lovely Ardor in August fic!
I want to thank Thevina (

thrihyrne) for fulfilling my Ardor in August story request, with her story, To Dwell in Lovers Eyes

Summary: With the first coming of Men into east Beleriand, the lives of the Elves are changed. For Amras, his lover, and Amrod's squire, this change becomes unexpectedly personal.

No spoilers, just a preview to make you want to read it! I wanted First Age, with plot, and said that I preferred OCs to weird canon rare-pairs. Thevina gave me all of that. I don’t know how many of you Silm-ficcers know her writing, but it is consistently excellent. Thevina excels at creating strong original characters. She does that in this piece also. She understands character and storylines and makes the surrounding world of each story palpable to the reader.

This story is about two brothers, close, but notably different from one another, ruling in adjacent regions of Beleriand. The moment in time is when they hear directly from a visiting Finrod of his first sighting of Men. Interesting reactions follow when the Elves meet the Men face-to-face. Lovely handling of the question of how similar but how different from one another are the First- and Second-born. Ooops! Almost forgot includes an established relationship and an unexpected new romance, along with the sexy stuff (the sex part wasn’t unexpected; she always does erotica well! ).

Thevina’s is one of a few longer stories in this year’s selection. I will make some additional special recs in a few days, because there are at least a half dozen in this batch that go onto my permanent list of memorable fanfic stories.

Thank you again so much, Thevina. Your art and craft are greatly appreciated. No one could have guessed that this was a virgin venture into writing in the world of The Silmarillion.

The picture is one of Lomacchi's numerous portraits of Maedhros,but pretend for the moment that it is one of his two youngest brothers.

Took this from two_point.
Actually working like a fool on my non-ficition SWG character bio of Finrod, but this is good to remind me of my unfinished fiction rattling around waiting to be tackled again.

Post a sentence from as many of your WIPs as you want, with no explanation attached. ( Read here. )