Thank you, m’dear! Nothing better than reader feedback and this is so eloquent and nice and yessss~ quotes you liked, and doing this for the Epic Fic!
So okay, first things first, I know you haven’t read ASoIaF so that lack of familiarity with the other canon proves this fic works without that knowledge- though I wonder what you make of the chapter title quotes and if parts of the story telegraph ‘we are inspired by another story”.
“ like a tiny star shining unseen above the clouds that blocked all light “ is a BEAUTIFUL line, so poetic.
As should be obvious, it is my homage to Sam’s famous star in Mordor scene. The key difference is that Faron in Angband cannot see any stars, is blocked from the outside world or hope. Morgoth is the not-so-metaphorical cloud placed between light/Valar/etc… Also the reoccurring concept of Faron is going to hear about the rest of Beleriand and what’s going on but never see it, only get either distorted events of have to take it on faith that they’re out there and happening.
I love all the little details about life before the war. I love the name dropping of characters like Gwindor. Yes, they had more connections than just their part in the story. Descriptions are all so vivid, make the setting and characters come alive. So much so that when I looked up and realized sun was streaming through my window in my thoroughly modern office and that I was holding a baby and typing on a computer I was shocked.
My writing’s good enough to immerse the reader, yes. Faelindis is even better at embodying that character that has seen it all, but the draw of this story, I hoped and wish to be, is that it is the narration with a perspective flip of these big events in the Silmarillion and that they aren’t isolated from each other. The events of the Lay of Lúthien tie directly to Children of Húrin, characters interacted with both major players, I expanded the Fall of Gondolin parts because I realized how many more ties I could work into. That Tol Sirion was a community before Sauron came, that the various cities had interactions.
“The Great Enemy had sunk his power into the earth of the Iron Prison, ensnared the souls of all under its shadow, warded it from the freedom of Mandos’s call. “ I love this sentence. Such a way with phrasing, yes. good.
Morgoth’s Ring, Morgoth’s Ring, Morgoth’s Ring. That he’s sunk his spiritual essence into the atoms around him, and that in a trait Fëanor shares with him, cannot stand the idea of anyone else worshiped, loved, or acclaimed as great that isn’t him.
Also, yet again, mortal souls can escape, and elves envy them.
Now to peal back the curtain and admit favorite lines, or just ones I have director’s commentary for, for chapter one:
First, the opening lines:
The princess’s eyes were light and bright as the source of the River Narog, the fair pools of Ivrin for which Lord Gwindor had named her, the green-blue of leaves reflected in clear water. But the eyes of this maiden were brown, dark and deep with fear.
It’s almost the direct quotes from ASoIaF about Jeyne’s brown eyes when Arya has grey, but I got to tie it to Finduilas’s canon nickname. I bring it up again with “
one of the small smooth rocks that lined the pools to make the waters of Ivrin seem all the brighter and clearer.” – Finduilas the pool, Faelindis the plain, supportive, meekly retiring handmaiden/friend who has the steady constancy and willpower of stone.
Faron remembered how his fear, that of a young boy away from home, had turned to wonder upon seeing the doors of Nargothrond for the first time. He had no memories of his body dragged from the battlefield through the iron doors of Angband, only waking in terror as the orcs shackled him and brought out the knives and the whip.
Faron’s first entrance into Nargothrond was a longer segment here, but moved to the next chapter once this story was expanded. Still, I love the juxtaposition of entering these two gates. Also, I had no desire to go into detail about the torture, or bring up moments post-initial interrogation. Just enough to let the reader know it happened, the location and what Faron and others are going through is ‘most hellish place on earth, to a supernaturally bad extent’, without going full out. On which side of that line at any given point the story was, eh, subjective.
The repeated mentions of poetry were me as the author trying to hand-wave the heavy use of metaphors and descriptive language and emphasis on imagery as this story was written with the fact that it’s written from a mostly third-person limited pov where the narrator is a brutalized slave of Angband. Faron speaks with too much poetry. Still, “described himself as a squashed spider
” – I delight in that line.
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