(Originally posted by @bams-boleyn – copied and pasted so it wouldn’t blow up the formatting on my blog.)
1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?
2: What scene did you first put down?
3: What’s your favorite line of narration?
4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?
5: What part was hardest to write?
6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?
7: Where did the title come from?
8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?
10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?
11: What do you like best about this fic?
12: What do you like least about this fic?
13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?
14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?
15: What did you learn from writing this fic?
This is so unique, reblogging on the off chance anyone is interested!
So it turns out I like biryani more than some other Indian dishes, even though I’m not the biggest aromatic food fan.
In other news, i feel I will need someone to vet and beta this Aglar fic.
Having to re-read the damn Fëanor quotes again to write this story. In other words, I’m paraphrasing both parts of this quote in my sentences:
But as the mind of Fëanor cooled and took counsel he perceived over-late that all these great companies would never overcome … and in his rebellion he thought that the bliss of Valinor might be further diminished and his power for war against Morgoth be increased.
And that bolded part is why when I had to go back to re-read and actually focus on what was written about Fëanor, I grew from a general dislike to outright hating the character, by-the-way.
I very much enjoy the theory that Shiro wasn’t supposed to be around for AT LEAST one of these episodes. Here’s a compilation of Shiro-standing-around moments.
My BIGGEST pet peeve when it comes to Tolkien is how people will sometimes characterize Melkor’s rebellion as being about him wanting to do his own thing and rebelling against Illuvatar’s oppressive sheet music.
THERE WAS NO SHEET MUSIC! Illuvatar wasn’t forcing anything. The Ainulindale was improv. Illuvatar just gave them the theme, the idea, the feeling, the starting point. The Ainur were drawing inspiration from the thought of Illuvatar, sure, and so long as they were in harmony the music played precisely as Illuvatar intended because Illuvatar had created them and knew how they worked together. But the music of the Ainur before Melkor’s dissonance was quintessentially creative, as well as corroborative. It was spontaneous, perfect harmony of free individuals perfectly in tune with each other, whose improvisations were constantly building upon each other.
Melkor’s rebellion was not about asserting his freedom of expression, because his expression was already free. Instead it was explicitly about making his own voice louder and more important than anyone else’s, and subjugating the creativity of others to instead convince or force them to follow him exactly in repetitive unison. And so, when Melkor’s goal became drown everyone else out, instead of make beautiful music together, his music became less creative, less innovative, and less his.
So it kind of annoys me when people talk about Melkor like he’s all for freedom of expression when he’s pretty much the opposite of that.
How.many of y’all been in jazz bands and gotten lead sheets for a song? Just the chord structure, some rhythms jotted out and maybe a few bars of a unifying theme? I played in student jazz bands for 6 years and let me tell you, the truly good musicians listen and feel out the structure of the song and when it comes to their solo, they’re ready and their expression shines. But then you get that one jackass who pulls something weird out of his ass during a performance and doesn’t follow the chord structure and you have to either let it sound bad or drown him out. It’s not freedom or creativity. It’s just being an asshole because you won’t play well with others.
This is pretty clearly reinforced in the story later when the Valar are all happily creating and building and inventing and Morgoth is coming along behind them and breaking all their shit like a toddler on a rampage in a nursery school. I just can’t see him as some noble antihero. (Nothing against people who do or who just enjoy that interpretation!)
Additionally I tend to see Tulkas as the one who fills the “destruction” niche in the pantheon moreso than Morgoth. This is not backed up by any word of Tolkien but I have long had a theory that Morgoth was meant to be Mankind’s BFF before he went haywire. Like, that was supposed to be his Thing the way the stars were Varda’s and the Airs were Manwë’s. There’s tons of supporting connections that point to this in the text, particularly in my mind that it’s a Man who’s destined to destroy Morgoth in the Dagor Dagorath. Not Eru, not one of the Valar, not an Elf, but frigging Túrin. Why? Because nobody in all the world was more betrayed by Morgoth than Men (and one Man in particular). His intended purpose was utterly corrupted in his actions.
This is specially clear in the paranoid lies he fed to Feanor about Men coming to steal the world, and the references to Morgoth hating Elves but *fearing* Men. Your insecurity is showing, buddy.
And maybe it’s just the Finrod fan in me, but his statement about Men being the inheritors of this mess with their ultimate destiny being to essentially heal the things that Morgoth broke in the world despite being (in the text) weaker, lesser, and easily corrupted…there’s a poetic symmetry and a ragged hopefulness in that that I find incredibly moving, all theorizing aside. The weakest of Eru’s children healing the wounds, including their own, caused by the failings and betrayals of the most powerful of the Valar. Healing wounds that no one else could correct despite their failures and weaknesses.
Time and again Tolkien gently guides his tales away from glorying in violence, instead holding up compassion and healing as the greatest work of all. Not just in the Silmarillion, either: “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.” As presented I would argue that it’s not Morgoth’s rebellion that is subvertive, but Men’s ability to heal from the damage he caused. If anything, Morgoth is nothing but entropy – mindless, pointless, the blank space in which others bring forth defiant love.
This dynamic is part of why his stories deeply affected me and continue to do so.
Feet hurt after work, so I thought to myself- maybe it’s time I use some of those Epsom salts and bath fizzies I have but never use (gifts for sisters). I have not taken a bath instead of a shower in…gah, probably twenty years? Like- actually use the bathtub for its intended purpose (aside from watering twelve orchids at once).
That was so uncomfortable. Feeling unbalanced, no soothing cleaning feeling, all the horribleness of floating but never stretch out to feel floating (it’s a small bathtub but I’m a tiny person.) Hello to low-key anxiety, agoraphobia, body repulsion, like fuck no thank you the day I switched over to taking showers instead of baths I know I never looked back and welcome affirmation why.
And maybe my feet hurt less? But that might just be because it’s been a few hours.
But yeah, relaxing bath is a personally oxymoronic phrase.
Annnd I’m back to writing Aglar. I can’t stick to one fic WIP. Also, I am going whole hog on the black-smithing metaphors for this POV. A little preview:
The prisoners knew not if the wolves would devour them in any set order, but the two spaces on the wall besides Aglar were now empty. His body was the only that remained on this side, and soon the wolves would be feasting on his remains. Aglar knew this with a grim certainty. He was trying to make a bet of the wolves’ lottery and received profanities from his companions for that effort. Only the mortal had laughed. Tacholdir and the king might have smiled; the pit was too dark to tell. Uncle Edrahil was too busy trying to soothe the captain to pay any heed to him. In the quest for more responses, Aglar called out to his companions, “Worry not! Perhaps the wolf shall choke on me.” That got another laugh from Beren, a sound made of an alloy weak in true humor. Aglar’s words came from pure viciousness, so the impurity of a response to his jest was fitting. Grim mortal humor. There was nothing not defiled by death in Beleriand; humor grew around it like new growth of a tree, the callus tissue around the wound of a broken branch. Beren was not the first mortal that Aglar befriended who used humor as shield and sword. They needed steel, not merely iron, and so horror was the carbon added to their happiness to make it strong enough to withstand a land where death was present and certain. He knew this before, but now in the darkness it was truth bright as a furnace. When his body was enslaved to misery and darkness, it fell to his mind and spirit to follow. Bright, kind, or noble feelings had abandoned Aglar, leaving as company only those thoughts that reflected the torment of his surroundings. Hatred demanded less effort to nurture in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth than hope. Hatred was warmer than the freezing stone with its rime of ice that could only be melted by slow application of body heat, the only reliable source of drinking water in this pit. Best of all, hatred blocked fear and shielded the mind from pure despair. Hatred did take effort to conjure, but at least it was something to feel.
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