About words

[shadowbrides]

I just needed to write an Andreth story before being able to actually go on writing the Noldorin government story, so there she is. Andreth-muse was fuming over my shoulder the entire time, so the view of the events described might just be somewhat...one sided embittered rant coloured. Then again, I suppose Finrod's was, too.

----------------------

Comments

[pandemonium_213]

I read the story yesterday, and it really has stuck with me, shadow. Andreth's voice is haunting, thought-provoking. So very well done. Poignant, raw, bitter. Kudos to reaching deep into Andreth's thoughts and bringing them to light.

I loved all of the story, but please indulge me in selecting a few passages that made me go "Oooooooh, nice!"

That has always been the way. I am the most knowledgeable story-keeper now, and I know I cannot trust the treacherous pen to preserve the intonation and intent of a living voice.

Fantastic! And I daresay, one can extrapolate the sentiment to electronic communications of our day and age.

I have read your Athrabeth: it is not how I remember that particular conversation. It is a one-sided recording, stripped of living voices. Then again, how could I blame you? There are those of us who call you, for all your might, for all your beauty, the Embalmers.

YES! You go, Andreth!

I know you will pin them down, strange them with your ink.Really love this. "Strange them with your ink" is

[shadowbrides]

Thank you so much. ^^ I might actually dare to post this to the SWG also, it's the first thing I've done that actually feels done. I really liked Andreth's voice in the Athrabeth, so I'm glad you thought it wasn't out of character. :D Oddly enough I had very little trouble coming up with what she might have felt about the situation, though have never really been in love and am still young myself. I suppose Finrod really is that enraging in it. :P

[pandemonium_213]

Oh, by all means you should post this on the SWG! That's the perfect place for it.

Finrod-the-anthropologist is thoroughly plausible. Reminds me of the 18th and 19th century naturalists who studied tribal peoples, considered less-than-human by the educated white scholars of northern Europe. You hit the nail on the head here...

After all, the Edain were fully sentient beings with a culture of their own already when he "discovered" them.

Furthermore, to quote Tolkien, "Elves and Men are evidently in biological terms one race." So that reinforces the notion of the educated more "civilized" scholar (albeit well-intentioned) studying the Edain. I really like your concept. A lot.

As an aside, in the Pandë!verse, the sub-text of this passage from The Silmarillion...

But after a time the Elf-kings, seeing that it was not good for Elves and Men to dwell mingled together without order, and that Men needed lords of their own kind, set regions apart where Men could live their own lives, and appointed chieftains to hold these lands

[shadowbrides]

Hah! Actually I was thinking of 19th century attitudes too, but I felt it would be presumptuous to make it overly obvious. Especially because I made the Edain a non-literate culture already, and as the Noldor are more or less colonizers from another continent, though in a by far more beneficent way than any European peoples did...it makes me a little uneasy to basically write a much softened fantasy version of things that happened to actual peoples, mainly by my direct ancestors ( I know for a fact that many of them owned ships and were not poor. In my country, that often means they were at least somehow involved with very dubious business). It seems disrespectful. If anything I would be more comfortable working with that concept with later Numenoreans, because they can do things as cruel without becoming OOC and unbelievable