rencat replied to your post “Send me any number 1-50 and I’ll answer with a factoid or expanded…”
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This is a short one, and when I am forced to pick my absolute favorite Silm Fan Fic that I’ve written, this is the one that I usually want to answer – or at least place it in the top five. Partially it is because it is short but does not need to be any longer or any accompanying story. And for all that it half-hinges on personal head-canons and interest in a character that is solely a name in a footnote of a supplementary text (Elmo), the meat of it is canon and the relationship between two characters that are of central importance to The Silmarilion and even during a key moment in the text. This isn’t me playing around in the margins, but having the confidence to write under the spotlight of center stage.
…I will have to check, but this might count as the first fic I wrote with Beren.
Change-of-heart where the in-law goes from hostile to begrudging to this moment where it is full acceptance – that is a story that we as humans deeply approve of, so no wonder I love it and want to celebrate it.
Commentary notes:
Behind them are the howls of the Great Wolf and Hound, trumpeting the echo of the wars of the Valar, the titanic struggle from before the mighty spirits’ entry into Arda, and it is nothing but noise.
I was tempted to add a hyphen or italicize or something to hammer the clean break of the shift in tone and focus, this grand mythic practically cosmic epic fight in the background- and that it is dismissed to the background because that’s not the focus. The focus is this quiet gesture and a man’s emotions.
The last line I switched from Elu to Elwë (and was very tempted to make it Elwê), because it’s a neon flashing sign that in that moment, he wasn’t reacting as King Elu Thingol with a few millennia of experience, but as the young man barely reaching adulthood scolding his family.
…I can write Elu the oldest sibling of three easier than Elu the King.
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