It's not the best layout ever, but I've never made too much of a fuss about layouts. The loading time, however... ><; Well, I'm extremely obsessed with loading times and my layout has one image apart from affiliates and clubs, which load after the content, but I'd rather not wait a few seconds for the page to load on a connection where my site loads within one second. Especially if there is very little to see on the page... :/
PS: asher son of ash, the fic's name is "The Quest for the Legends" and the exact quote is "Death is not to be feared, for it is the only thing that we all have in common."