No, I'm totally NOT exaggerating. I firmly believe the reason I'm single is my Tolkienism (which isn't fetishistic, just obsessive) is even geekier than playing D&D - which I still do, of course.

I was telling Paul last night that if he weren't straight and my husband, I'd totally be setting the two of you up. So, clearly, we just have to find my spouse's gay twin somewhere.

Yesterday, I invented Improv Mad Libs Apples to Apples. I believe it to be a very Buffista game.

How old were you?

I couldn't have been older than 5.

Maybe Hermit Boy should get ya one! It benefits him too, no?

Hmmm, that just might work!

pro'lly because I've blocked "Star Trek - The Motion Picture" from my memory.

I have the "extended version" that came out a few years ago - and y'know, it's 40 MORE MINUTES of FLYING SLOWLY. Blocking STTMP is perfectly understandable.

I'm just a (minor) completist, that's why I have it (and Star Trek 5 - "Kirk takes on God, and wins!") - though I can't watch STV. It causes migraines from the STUPID.

You have Star Trek 5? That's hardcore completist there.

V is the only one I didn't see in the theater. I saw parts of it in the theater, and that was enough.

Tolkien only really started writing fiction as a vehicle for his invented languages; while not exactly true, the waaaaay-geeky Tolkienophile joke is "at 7, he knew 7 languages; at 21, he knew 21".

Shall we agree that the language bits started to coalesce before the mythology part of his story?

I think I may be getting hot flashes. WTF?

and Star Trek 5 - "Kirk takes on God, and wins!"

Wow, that's worse than Fantasy Island, where Roarke takes on Satan, and wins!

Shall we agree that the language bits started to coalesce before the mythology part of his story?

Oh, yah. :) He had 3 invented "languages" (which he later disavowed as experiments, not "true languages") BEFORE he went to Oxford.

The legendarium was never complete; up until he got too senile to actually work (about 3 years before his death), he was revising and revising and revising. In fact, he was forced by Houghton Mifflin to stop revising LotR so it could be published; he was in the middle of a story-pass having to do with Galadriel's past - and if you know what to look for, you can pick out the discrepancies. (What the Fellowship is told about Lorien while they're in Rivendell is slightly different than what they're told *in* Lorien.)

I delight in finding these little wrinkles. To me, it makes the world more alive. It's the despair of my family, though, that I'm more conversant in Middle-earth's history (and Tolkien's) than I am in the real world's. I just figure - there are 5 billion people in the real world; they've got "reality" covered, I've got Middle-earth (and someone has to, after all.)