TBT - Lord of the Rings Fandom

Just hanging out with a LOTR poster in Florida

Does anyone else remember Sean Bean's bum?

If that phrase means anything to you, then you were probably one of the hundreds of fangirls that I used to chat with in an online Lord of the Rings fan community. Hello again! I was (still am?) mrsfrodob.

When Lord of the Rings first came out, I had no idea what it was. I'd never read the books or heard of the books. I just remember seeing a Burger King commercial for collectible cups, and there was a movie clip in the commercial of guys walking atop a mountain.

Looked boring to me.

But then I found out that Elijah Wood was in the movie, and, well, I had sort of a crush on Elijah Wood. One New Year's Eve when all our other friends were partying with boys, my friend Teresa and I stayed up watching The Faculty. And then we watched it again the next morning. ("Showdown!")

So, of course, I was going to see a movie that starred my current celeb crush. So that's what Teresa and I did. Nine times. And then four more times when the movie left regular theaters and came to our local $1 theater.

This was my door freshman year. Lots of LOTR stuff.

That's right. We were a little obsessed, and it was more than just Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom (who I never liked, fyi), Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd. Okay, yes, they were all hot, but the story!! It was just so magical and adventurous and funny and sad. We just became consumed with all things Lord of the Rings, including buying and reading (and re-reading) the books.

My freshman year of college, I had a roommate who was never in our room and a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule that saw me done with classes by 11:30 a.m., while my friends continued on to their next class. So I had a lot of free time to myself. I joined an online Lord of the Rings fan community to chat with other people about the books, the movies, and yes, the hot actors. Which is where Sean Bean's bum came from.

I wish I could remember the name of the website, so I could look it up and see if it's still there, if all of our silly community threads are still somewhere out there in cyberspace. I never met any of those people in person, but we always talked about how cool it would be to converge on a hotel and have a big fangirl conference. The international fans shared information about the actors that us American fans didn't know about. One girl even made DVDs with some of Billy Boyd's international appearances and movies on it and sent them to some of us.

Sophomore year desk area - complete w/ free LOTR poster!

I loved being a part of that community, but by sophomore year, I had full-time roommates/friends and a larger class load. I still hung my Lord of the Rings movie poster (received for free from a Toys "R" Us store that no longer needed it) on the wall. Teresa and I still got excited about the final movie being released, and I still thought Elijah Wood was hot. But my participation in the online community wane
d, and I suspect everyone else's did, too.

Maybe we were all just getting a little too old and consumed with life to be as giddy as we once were.

But I recently saw an ad for a new TNT show starring Sean Bean, and the first thing that popped into my head was "Sean Bean's bum!"

It made me smile, and I wished I still knew someone who would also smile at that.