z-h-i-e

[z-h-i-e]

Smaug and I play a game with music. He’ll be listening on some random song on Pandora or Sirius and if it’s not a common hit he’ll ask me to name the musician or band.

I have a pretty high accuracy rate. It’s like a catalog in my head for voices.

This morning I’m coming downstairs and he says ‘okay, who’s this?’

3 or 4 notes in, I say Herbie Hancock. Sure as hell was. So I guess I’ve unknowingly done this with jazz instrumentalists, too.

Anyhow he’s a link to info about an awesome jazz musician:

[z-h-i-e]

…so let’s start talking about which library school you should enroll at.

(The above? Seriously one of my biggest reasons for becoming a librarian.)

I FUCKING LOVE INFORMATION!!! I WANT TO LEARN EVERY THING AND KNOW EVERYTHING!!!!! I WANT TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ABOUT LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING!!!!!! I AM UTTERLY CONSUMED BY MY THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!

[z-h-i-e]

Pssssst...S&D sign-ups are still open

@fall-for-tolkien's Scribbles and Drabbles is back for the 2025 edition. (Serious post with dates and infos ➜here)

❥ Do you have prompt ideas and colour crayons?

❥ Do you have a favourite (underrated) pairing?

❥ Is there something (a trope, a pairing, an interpretation, an idea, etc) you just can't get enough of?

❥ Do you like following the muse on unexpected adventures?

☞ JOIN US!

We have 1 sign-up sheet for authors and artists, so pick your poison (or don't! Come as you are, sign up for both, and see where it takes you!)!

We have Hobbit, we have LOTR, we have Silm, and much more. All Tolkien fandoms are welcome, all levels and interpretations of art are celebrated, and there's tons of fun to be had!

Minimum word count is 100 words, but the sky is your limit! Also, every piece of art can be claimed 3 times, so you have a triple chance to get an amazing story for your idea!

Sign-up deadline for artists is 30th of June, so take heart and a leap of faith! We're waiting for you!

Please read the rules, found under FAQs & Art Slide Guide. For all other questions, the Mods are there to help and enable assist.!

See you there!

Also, we have some amazing things in the gallery already, so there shall be something for every taste!

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This was an excellent bedtime story. I might even read it again.

[z-h-i-e]

You are not bothering me if you ask when I’m updating something.

You are not bothering me if you have a question about something I wrote.

You are not bothering me if you have thoughts and feelings to share about an OC I came up with.

You are not bothering me if you just send a comment that reads ‘Haldir Lives!’ and then bounce off.

I came across the box of stories I know exist somewhere that is not AO3 that I want to transfer there.

Each of these index cards has the title of a story I wrote that isn’t on AO3. There’s about 200.

There are likely more I just don’t recall that I’ll stumble across as time goes by.

Poking and nudging here and on Discord are welcomed. Over the years, so many people who used to ask and discuss and glomp and nudge have left the fandom or passed away. It’s been almost a month since my father passed away. There were stories he inspired and stories he encouraged. But what probably isn’t known is how much motivation he provided. From providing the first computer I wrote fanfic on (an 80s Samsung desktop with a 5 inch floppy drive and a dot matrix printer) to buying a lifetime account on Flat for me to compose music, and from sitting on the porch listening to me read things I wrote while giving honest feedback to keeping copies of poems I wrote for him in his desk drawer, there are so many connection points I have to him.

He was a writer, too, though what he wrote were textbooks. A little different on the creativity side of things.

Anyhow, it came up that there are some who have worried about the lack of productivity on my part, and have discussed this amongst each other, but didn’t want to bother me with everything going on.

No one is bothering me, and the distraction is appreciated.

And there’s a whole box of things that are already written that need to be centralized.

Nudging is okay - it’s encouraged.

[z-h-i-e]

Dinosaurs

Shout out to all the future kids who announce their favorite dinosaur is Khankhuuluu mongoliensis on the first day of Kindergarten.

New species of dinosaur discovered that 'rewrites' T.rex family tree

[z-h-i-e]

I once had a story I thought I had posted fully. Oops - I only had through chapter 14 posted. Because shiny things distract me and I was off writing eight other stories. Five years later, someone finally asked if I was going to finish it, and they were rewarded with the other half of the chapters all the way to the end.

Dialogue with WIP authors; you never know what treasures you’ll find.

I feel like this is an unpopular opinion, but more people should read incomplete/unfinished/in-progress fanfics.

I've noticed this huge trend where creators on tiktok and tumblr who will be explaining how to use Archive Of Our Own to new users and they always say "and make sure to scroll down and click completed only" or how people will go out of their way to mention they only read completed fics 'because they were traumatized when they forgot to check the dates and didn't realize this fic hadn't been updated since 2012'.

The thing is - I think by not engaging with and/or actively avoiding writer's WIPs readers are potentially adding to the aggregate of abandoned works. Now this obviously isn't the case for all abandoned fics, anything from major life events, to loss of interest, to getting busy can be a reason for a fic getting abandoned - but at least on some level I just know that writers are quitting while they're ahead when they aren't garnering any response or feedback because reading WIPs has become unpopular. If you're worried about reading something that hasn't been updated since 2012 then you can use the date updated function to sort out old fics.

Anyways, support your favorite fanfic writers by engaging with their WIPs.

[z-h-i-e]

Podfic: Such a Little Thing

Podfic of a story from about 20 years ago.

Elflings getting up to shenanigans in Valinor. Notes at the beginning; Bunniverse Thranduil is Telerin, because making him generally the same age as Galadriel and Ecthelion is how I roll.

Looking for other podfics I've recorded? Speak friend and enter - send a message and I'll send you an invite to the Discord server where I post them and unreleased stories and notes that I've written.

[z-h-i-e]

This keeps coming across my dash and every time I see it I love it more.

A trade with @weirdosheep!

In exchange they wrote this amazing fic for me, I'm very happy, it’s the first time I’ve gotten a fic as a gift!

[z-h-i-e]

I love this so much <3

Please come back

I’m back

If the quality is bad, click on the image

My contribution to finrod/thranduil! I really wanted to nail down a headcanon for Legolas’ other father and I found @tathrin and @z-h-i-e posts about them and I was super inspired!!!!! They’re my otp now lol.

The first drawing is when Finrod is leaving nargothrond to go help beren and they both know that he’s gonna die. The second drawing is reuniting in Valinor!

Stay tuned because I’m gonna post my timeline of them and the twins soon!

[z-h-i-e]

AO3 F-ed up, and now they're blaming me, or, why maybe we shouldn't let AO3 archive old archives

Greetings, friends. I bring to you a tale of what the fuckery tonight.

Summary: AO3 thought they did a good thing importing items from an old fanfiction archive. I proactively asked them not to import my works from that archive and was told that they wouldn't do it - they even sent me the files. On 1/27/2023, dozens of stories I asked NOT to be imported because they're on AO3 or I wished to add them myself suddenly showed up. I thought I did everything I needed to so that this would NOT happen, but clearly that was not the case. On 5/12/2025, AO3 penalized me for their mistake.

Read on, darlings.

When I caught the mistake, I went in and I added 'DO NOT READ THIS RIGHT NOW' to the front of each title and an explanation, and I did delete the ones I caught that weren't even stories - you see, for some of the stories, I knew that the files were just messages about the Keith Mander drama of the old Lord of the Rings Fanfiction archive, and that I had removed the story content. But when they did this? I had a double infection of covid and bronchitis, and I wasn't exactly in a place to handle this situation.

But I did at some point wander back, going story by story to make sure anything that wasn't a story was deleted, anything that wasn't my choice to have there but wasn't going to super hurt things could be left for now and cleaned up later, etc.

Well, I missed one. I missed one that was a 400 chapter story originally, but had been reduced to just some links. Now, this should not be my fault -- AO3 had decided to import without actually looking at files, without recalling the previous discussion I had with them about my fics not being transferred from LotRF to AO3 (I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 700+ fics on the LotRF archive at one point, and I didn't know what backups they were working with), but once they were there and people were reading, I wasn't going to start yanking them away, I slowly began to work through them to make them respectable members of society. Clearly, I wasn't going to start with the 400 chapter one (nor had I noticed that one wasn't properly dealt with). And I had already spent my own time cleaning up the mess of many I caught that they should never have imported no matter what, due to not really having content in them.

So, I'm sitting at the hospital, where I was visiting my father. From February 11th through his death on May 20th, I was visiting him almost daily. I spent as much time there as I could, including eating meals there. On May 7th he ended up in a coma after what should have been a basic surgery, so you can sure as hell bet, as I sat in the cafeteria on May 12th, eating whatever constituted for food that day, looking up information on how to rouse people from coma after surgery, I was not a happy camper when I got this message:

Here's the text of it for easy reading:

Hi, 

The AO3 Policy & Abuse committee has received a complaint that one of your works is not a fanwork: 

"DO NOT READ THIS RIGHT NOWWhispers", located at https://archiveofourown.org/works/44590036

This is a violation of Section II.B of our Terms of Service. AO3 is an archive for the preservation of fanfiction and other transformative fanworks. Non-fanworks may not be uploaded to AO3. Examples of non-fanworks include social media posts, fic searches, ads, prompts or requests, lists of other works, personal messages, empty works, and any other non-transformative content. 

We have hidden the work and require you to delete it within 7 days. You can access the hidden work using the link provided above. If you don't remove the work by this deadline, an AO3 administrator will delete it. 

A warning has been placed on your account as a result of this violation. We recommend that you review your account and ensure your other works are in compliance with our Terms of Service. If you do not remove all violating content, or if you violate the Terms of Service again, you may be temporarily or permanently suspended. 

For more information about content and behaviors that are not permitted on AO3, and the penalties you may receive for a violation, please refer to our Content Policy and Terms of Service FAQ: 

https://archiveofourown.org/content

https://archiveofourown.org/tos_faq#policy_procedures_faq

If you have any questions, or if you wish to appeal this decision, please reply to this email. 

Ross

AO3 Policy & Abuse

So I immediately go and look, sure enough, this is one of the items that was ported over, and it's one that the AO3 archivist didn't catch before loading it and attaching it to my account, and Ross here didn't go and read and use deductive reasoning to figure out -- oops, this was an AO3 screw up.

Because this is on every one of the imported stories I haven't gotten to yet:

Again, for easy reading, the text version:

NOTE FROM ZHIE: DO NOT READ THIS FIC RIGHT NOW. When this archive import was announced, I asked not to be included and that I would import the stories on my own. On 1/27/2023, dozens of stories I asked NOT to be imported because they're already here or I wished to add them myself suddenly showed up. I thought I did everything I needed to so that this would NOT happen, but clearly that is not the case. Since they're here now, I'll deal with them myself, but I am not particularly happy with this outcome and I feel the trust meter with AO3 just went down for the first time since I've been here. As I have time (I'm a little busy pretty for B2MEM and I'm also terribly sick right now) I'll fix this because I'm certainly not going to trust AO3 to do it now, but I'm not happy. So please, don't read this, don't rec this, don't print it or save it, just move along, I'm sure a dozen new things got loaded by someone else while you read this. Thank you.

Note from Queen Mab, the archivist: this story was originally archived at Lord of the Rings Fanfiction and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2021. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on Lord of the Rings Fanfiction’s collection profile.

Also, whichever fucktard decided to report this after you read the notes -- fuck you most of all. I pretty much am cool with anyone reading my fanfics. I don't lock things away if I've put them in public, I don't post messages of 'if you like horses don't read my stories because I don't like horses so I don't like you' or anything like that. But you? Person who had to click on the story to see the thing, and then took the time to report it instead of being courteous, contacting the author, and letting them know, hey, I think this one is an error load? Yeah, fuck you most of all. Back to the story.

I sent a reply to Ross on May 12th, almost immediately. I have heard nothing.

I sent a follow-up reply to Ross on May 24th. Still nothing.

I sent a detailed message through AO3 support on May 24th with a timeline of events. I have heard nothing from anyone there.

With my father now passed away (coming on the heels of losing my dog, both of our elderly cats, and my parrot Felix who was with me for almost two decades and sat on my shoulder almost every time I was writing fic for all those years last summer), I have time to go and worry about fanfic. So I dug up one of the old chapters of Whispers, plopped it into the file, and sent Ross another follow-up letting Ross know that it isn't in violation, but I still haven't had any communication from anyone regarding the situation, regarding how AO3 created the issue, how I should not be penalized and placed on notice for something that wasn't my mistake to begin with after trying to be proactive. I'm not holding my breath that I'll ever hear back from Ross, but I'm still trying!

Now, to add to the WTFness of this -- there were tags selected for this not-a-story. How? I don't have a fucking clue because I didn't select jack shit on the old archive. So someone who was archiving this looked at the info advising people not to archive at LotRF, and decided 'well, it's Zhie, must be slash' and selected m/m and explicit and Finwë (just Finwë). Apparently even my advisories are nsfw and contain smut and a random elf.

So it got me thinking -- this is something that could cause some chaos for future archives.

Let's say that there is content on an older archive such as what I had done - messages discussing the fandom politics of the time, or, something that doesn't adhere to the AO3 policies but adheres to the policies of the archive that the material comes from.

Now let's say something gets uploaded from that archive and not caught. And it's attached to the record of an author - and imagine if you will that this author had other works on AO3, but now they're not writing fanfic, or maybe they're deceased. And then some fucktard (see above) comes by to report something. And the AO3 staff blocks the thing and issues a warning - to no one. And maybe it happens more than once, and the person isn't there to defend themself. Because they're not watching that email, or they're not in fandom at that point, or they're dead. And suddenly AO3 suspends the account or deletes it, and all of the other content is lost now, because AO3 screwed up.

Sending archives to AO3 always seemed like a good idea in the past. Anyone who asked me about what to do if they were trying to decide where to move a fanfic archive or library they didn't have time/money/etc to run anymore, I would advise them to go there. I'd thought about it for King & Herald, which I've been shepherding for a number of years even though I wasn't the archivist and I didn't start it. But now, seeing what happened to me, and still not being able to get anyone to answer me, which is frustrating (and yes, I know it's mainly volunteers, but this message and their actions were pretty harsh without looking into things properly before just moving right to this decision, so I think I'm allowed to be pissed about it), I do not have the faith I used to have in AO3.

Dare I even say, it's beginning to feel like the vibes I got a few years before NaNoWriMo all went to shit. Sometimes nonprofits get so big, they forget where their soul is. Sometimes, they lose it altogether.

So that's my tale of caution, darlings. I had really wanted to build everything in my catalog up on AO3 so that it was all in one place and I didn't have to spend so much maintenance time, but now I'm considering alternatives. I'm hoping that AO3 eventually does take a look at the evidence (though I'm definitely salty about the guilty until proven innocent way they've gone about things) and reverse their decision.

If not, I'll be back here to bitch about it more.

Anyone else have any disgruntled AO3 user stories to share? Feel free to vent in the comments or replies.

[z-h-i-e]

he was one of my favorite star trek novel authors😭😭

[z-h-i-e]

Because there were names that were more creative and fun, or, we just used the / symbol.

And then a lot of the writers and artists went to other fandoms (or died).

And people came after and didn’t know what to call what they were reading so they used general mashups.

I much preferred when we called Glorfindel/Erestor ‘Sunshine&Shadow’ or ‘Soldier&Scribe’ (or ‘Seneschal&Scholar’ or whatever the flavor was in that circle)

why are the silmarillion ship names so much more creative than lotr ship names. are you fucking serious. RUSSINGON!!? ANGBANG?? SILVERGIFTING??! so fucking creative. and then over on the lotr side we have samfro, farawyn, gigolas, arawen, and other names that are essentially a mash of their names together. even the hobbit fandom is more creative- BAGGINSHIELD?? at least we switched it up and put their last names together. let’s catch up guys oh my god

ok i’m not actually suggesting to change them. it’s just funny how every other section of the fandom has cool names. and then we have. gigolas.

[z-h-i-e]

There used to be a Tolkien-based matchmaking website.

http://archives.theonering.net/perl/newsview/7/1139975601

They should make a Tolkien based dating app because I don't want to explain The Silmarillion to people or make them read the book whICH THEY NEVER DO BECAUSE THEY ALWAYS GET STUCK ON THE FIRST CHAPTER.

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Y’all need to go vote yes so I have another excuse to write Finrod stories.

I know we have an Arafinwean week, but some characters or ships have their own weeks too so I was wondering if there would be interest in a Finrod week?

I only did a quick search to see if there has been one before and I didn’t see anything.

[z-h-i-e]

I forgot that polls were a thing. Thank you for assisting with the statistical portion of this inquiry.

My phone keeps changing it to “Laws and Costumes” and I’m getting unnecessary masquerade vibes every time I look at the Silmarillion.

And then I think about the time Tolkien and Lewis dressed up like polar bears, and I contemplate which two characters would show up at an important event in their best polar bear garb, because I find that very necessary to think about.

[z-h-i-e]

My phone keeps changing it to “Laws and Costumes” and I’m getting unnecessary masquerade vibes every time I look at the Silmarillion.

And then I think about the time Tolkien and Lewis dressed up like polar bears, and I contemplate which two characters would show up at an important event in their best polar bear garb, because I find that very necessary to think about.