elfmaiddryope:

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Yeah, that was a nice line. Also that sentence structure is a tell of mine; if you start looking for sentences where I go “___ is (at least 3 things)” as a closing or transitioning thought, yeah it’s a tick.

poisons of anxiety, pain, and self-recrimination accumulated in the marrow of his bones.

is lead-in to this metaphor : 

Angband was the cruel fossilization of soul, entombing a body in the miserable all-encompassing darkness of its iron mines, slowly eating away flesh and bone, and filling the cavity with a broken slinking creature that cowered in desperation.

because let me talk about the imagery and science of fossilization. It’s not petrifaction. It’s being buried under mud and dirt and that turning into stone locking it in, and then what’s been locked it dissolving and decaying away and the groundwater minerals and such filling in that hollow, replacing what has been shelled out, and that’s a much more involved and accurate metaphor for what I see as Angband’s misery and the orcs.

Also yeah, self-loathing. It’s fun as long as you ignore its existence.

“ a seagull lost in the trees, roosting awkwardly with bats “ I love your turns of phrase.

This was a later-added sentence, sitting on the side of whimsy, but one of my beta readers also loved it.

Re: politics – Here’s where the premise as Theon Greyjoy as an elf comes into play. Looking at this section and the next: this is one where most of the quickly introduced characters are working off parallel characters from ASoIaF. Theon from the books was the third son of the lord of basically evil viking pirate province/sub-kingdom. His father rebels, loses that rebellion and his older two sons, and has his remaining son taken as a “ward” (read: hostage) by the king and sent to live with the lord of the northernmost sub-kingdom/province. Said lord being the first main pov character, a generally honorable bloke, has all the kids that are major characters. Theon is good friends with the eldest of these kids, but knowing that while raised with them, the fact is if his viking dad ever rebelled again, the next morning Theon was getting his head chopped off. There’s a bucket of issues there, and for the first couple books yeah Theon was near the bottom of characters I liked. He was a nasty piece of work, but because of insecurities and arrested development, and nothing builds sympathy like subjecting the character to the worst in the book and have his arc be a slow reclaiming of humanity and identity and helping to rescue another character in a similar wretched state.

This is also why I have a set of tags that state that being a sympathetic fan of Theon’s situation, it makes interpretations of Elros and Elrond’s captivity that try to sugarcoat it personally annoying. Because of quotes like this:

“This is craven,” Ser Rodrick said. “To use a child so… this is despicable.“

“Oh, I know,” said Theon. “It’s a dish I tasted myself, or have you forgotten? I was ten when I was taken from my father’s house, to make certain he would raise no more rebellions.”

“It is not the same!”

Theon’s face was impassive. “The noose I wore was not made of hempen rope, that’s true enough, but I felt it all the same. And it chafed, Ser Rodrick. It chafed me raw.” He had never quite realized that until now, but as the words came spilling out he saw the truth of them.”

So, how to translate this to the Silm? Well, the maritime group was easy to pick. Now to think of a lesser parallel version of the hostage, and I went to Círdan and Finrod’s friendship and their efforts to try and hold peace between groups with an unpaid blood debt. I refuse to believe there wasn’t lingering mistrust, dislike, and resentment of the Noldor among some Sindar, especially those that had to interact with them (when the Noldor pissed off the Taytar Avari from the get-go, c’mon…)

Also, Orodreth as someone who always hated the Fëanorians (unlike Angrod and Aegnor there was no much earlier discarded draft where they were once friends). More interesting if there’s only enmity between them. The idea of Nargothrond over-crowded with refugees it wasn’t prepared for.

Let’s see. The constant ‘should have died with Aglar’ sentences were delineations of this segment of the story, plus repetition ‘i hope the readers get the point’.

Gil-galad’s parentage where I try to give a cute mathematician’s answer.

Overall this wasn’t a chapter with lines I particularly loved, except the beginning paragraphs and the end with the blue light on Aglar’s face. I do like the two parts of this section:

In those solemn months Nargothrond felt like Faron’s old home, like the tense months during the siege when Faron’s mother wept over her dead sons and his father watched the orcs on the other side of the walls. Aglar had begged Faron for guidance to weather the grief of a brother’s death as one who had traveled such a path before. Faron could not explain to his friend that his brothers had been men grown before he was born, hard men with more love for the sea than a new babe in his mother’s arms.

Firs of all, I haven’t written about the siege of Brithomber or think I’ve ever seen fic for it, which is a shame. There should be. it’s be a darker, lesser prelude to Isle of Balar right before the Army of the Valar come. 

For the second half, here’s again playing with ASoIaF, because in the book, Theon (after returning home) leads his father’s vikings to raid and capture the northern province stronghold, capturing the youngest brothers of Aglar’s counterpart, Robb, and then fakes their deaths. This ..hurts (understatement) Robb, and is one of the reasons Robb sleeps with and marries Jeyne Westerling, which leads to more problems. So, Bragollach kills several brothers of people in Nargothrond (or in Gelmir’s case, appeared to). Add to it, Aglar has one brother die and cousin thought to (unlike other stories, Silm allows me to bring characters back to life, thus giving me little reservation not to kill them- if elven). 

Theon’s brothers were assholes. I couldn’t make elves treat their younger siblings so terribly, so I softened it. Also, any point I can, I like to insert Falmari relatives of Sindarin characters, and said Sindar wondering and resenting and longing for the long-gone family.

I like the flow of the last part of the last sentence. *shrug*