Snowflake Challenge: Day 12
Jan. 24th, 2021 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narya_flame
AKA the meme thing. Shamelessly swiping this one from Indy and Lilith.
1. Which is your favorite of the fics you’ve written for X fandom?
2. Favorite piece overall?
3. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?
4. Which has the most “you” in it, however you’d define that?
5. What is an image/set of images that you’re particularly proud of?
6. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?
7. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment?
8. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment?
9. Favorite character to write?
10. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you’ve written
11. If I’m showing off just one of your pieces to someone, which one should it be?
12. What WIPs do you have going now? Are you excited about them?
13. Are there any things that might have happened in any of your stories, but you changed them at the last minute? (So-and-so dies, they don’t actually kiss, main character has long extended ballet-based dream sequence, etc.)
14. Would you want to write canon for any of your fandoms (like be hired by showrunner to do an episode)? Which one?
15. Does font matter to you when you’re writing a draft?
16. 3 favorite comments ever received on fanfic.
17. Any mean comments? How’d you deal with it? Who laid the smackdown?
18. If you could go back and revise one of your older stories, which would it be?
19. Do you make up scenes at work/on the bus/at the gym? Who are the characters that pop up the most? Do you write them down?
20. Go nuts, and talk about writing.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-25 10:14 am (UTC)Ilbereth led the way back over the tundra to the place in the cliff he had opened before. He lifted a hand to the sheer frozen wall, and then paused.
“Oxford?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You're sure?”
“For now.”
“Very well, then.” A silvery archway appeared in the ice; it shone brightly for a moment, like Ithildin of old, only reflecting the soft pink and lilac wash of the Arctic dawn – and then it melted away without trace, opening back into Codrington Library. Ilbereth turned back to him. “We ought to thank you, I suppose.”
“Ilbereth...” Maglor paused in the doorway. “Did I ever know you? Before this, I mean. Elves shouldn't forget, and yet -”
Ilbereth shook his head. “Makalaurë, when I saw you last, you would not have known your own mother if she stood in front of you.”
Maglor felt the cool, withering touch of guilt in his stomach.
“Go.” Ilbereth gave him a gentle push. “You're letting snow into the library.”
It was true; the wind was blowing chunks of powdery snow through the archway and into the recess. The gallery smelled and felt as it always did – watchful, aloof, with the faded vanilla scent of old paper in the air. The chapel bells were still ringing the hour, and the light pooling on the floor was the hazy silver of an autumn moon.
“Oh, Maglor?”
He turned.
Ilbereth folded his arms and smiled – this time with genuine amusement. “I know what you have in your pocket.”
Maglor grinned and saluted, and stepped forward through the recess as the clock finished chiming twelve.
16. Unfortunately a lot of my favourite comments were on the Faerie archive, which I suspect is now sadly defunct; it's down, and the site owner isn't responding to queries. I did get some lovely ones on Paradox on AO3, though...
Oh gosh I had such a well put together comment in my head and now it’s all flown out the window trying to make sense of how much I love this fic. It’s 2 am now and I really spent all morning (yesterday morning now, wow!), glimpses of it throughout the day, and now well into the night. I can’t stop reading it! I had read all there was! Anyhow-
It’s so rare to find something so impeccably real and clear as this, that you can just laugh along to at the awkward moments at and feel dread at the dreadful moments. A lot of Silm fics are all mournful and sad - this gives it a bit more of a rounded, real-life look. And damn I really know nothing about musicals but everything around it was so enticing and hilarious I just might have to get into it more (I listened to With Cat-Like Thread And was cackling picturing Maglor singing it). And that cat - that reminds me - I know it’s going to have some symbolism, or parallelism, or something, but I just can’t figure it out. Its set up too neat. Too suspicious. It’s driving me crazy.
As for as the actual characters, it was a bit trippy to read at first, since, strangely and coincidentally, I know three people with the same names as the main characters. Weird. Regardless, they’re each so developed and themselves that I feel like I really do know them, and gosh do I want to know more about Claire (the pranks in school? Hilarious)! And Maglor - yours is probably my favorite version of him. He has this power and confidence that I haven’t found with many others, that fits him so well it’s hard to picture him the way I used to anymore.
(A side note: I’ve googled and looked up so many slang things and anything of-the-such because I’m a small-town American and I don’t understand a lot of this. It’s very entertaining.)
Well, that was a long rant! Thank you so much for writing this and sharing it with us all, and I’ll be on the edge of my seat waiting for more. :)
I've spent half a decade reading Silmarillion fanfic maybe nonstop, and this one right here, this is in my top five favorites that I've ever read.
It's both domestic and epic; it's both silly and serious; it's heartfelt, it's grave, it's full of both tragedy and hope. And, like in Tolkien's stories, the setting comes alive. There is no silence in this fic: when the characters reach that unspoken covenant that words are neither wanted nor needed, it's St. Andrews' turn to speak. A ray of light coming through the window, the cry of a gull, the cavorting of college students living out their years of innocence. It's Tolkien's works that made me fall in love with writing setting as a part of the story, and you continue that very fine, very magical tradition in this fic in a way that takes my breath away.
You made me fall in love with your characters. I am INVESTED in Harrison, Rosie, Theo and Claire, and I want them to be HAPPY. I want them to have full, happy lives, and I am PROUD of the young adults they are becoming. You made me fall in love with St. Andrews. I had to pull up the little seaside college town on Google Maps and scroll my way around it, to mentally map out all the streets and stores and beaches that make up the living backdrop of the story, to imagine these places in snow and rain and hail and ethereal golden sunlight. You made me want to visit it. BADLY. And I am a warm-blooded Californian, absolutely allergic to cold in all its forms. So sparking that desire in me is not an easy feat.
And, you made me fall in love with Maglor all over again. He is without question my favorite Tolkien character, and I know I'm not alone, being that he's something of a fandom darling. I've read countless fics with countless different interpretations of him, but yours is special in a way that I can best sum up as balanced. He is not broken, but he is fading. He is not cold-blooded, but he's not innocent, either. He's warm, and caring, and sweet; he's thoughtful and kind, but with a strength to him that goes beyond human language to describe. Seeing him through Claire's eyes was like meeting him all over again, and I loved that. I LOVED it. Like her, I want to hold onto him and tell him everything's going to be okay, despite how ethereal and faraway he seems. He's both real and unreal, human and divine. I love him to death, and you should be proud of the way you've written him.
Naturally I had to go through and read the entire Wanderer series, and I confess myself eternally hungry for more. You could probably just keep on writing fluffy one-shots set in St. Andrews with Maglor and the gang for FOREVER and I'd read every single one the day it came out, happily rolling around in the feels. This fic is definitely going to be on my list of "fics I'll re-read forever," right up there with The Starless Road, which made me cry for hours. Thank you, so much, for posting this fic.
And this one on the very belated Christmassy fic I posted yesterday made me sniffle, because I noticed it's from someone who leaves a lot of kudos but rarely comments, so it was lovely to hear from them and it was such a sweet thing to say:
I love these people so much, reading about them is therapy all by itself.
Your writing is so beautiful and vivid, I adore this universe so much
(Thank you for asking that, btw, going back through my old comments made me so happy.)
no subject
Date: 2021-01-25 03:34 pm (UTC)