The other Minas Tirith story. Slavic-style stream of consciousness,
after the manner of Kafka, Conrad, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy — not that I'm
claiming to be in their league, of course.
You Have Been Warned…
Rating: probably R, due to extreme violence and emotional intensity.
Language? Of course it contains language. That's what the
hröa
of a story consists of. There are no tabu words, however. But tabus are
evoked due to the combination of words: that is, by the ideas they in turn
evoke. Is it worse than Lord of the Flies, or A Day No Pigs Would
Die — both of which are routinely inflicted upon 14 year olds by the
academic industry? I think not, though may be wrong. Also, non-standard
employment of possibly-excessive punctuation and alliteration…? Your call.
Setting: First Age, late autumn, about ten years give or take a year
or so after the Dagor Bragollach. References to Silmarillion and
other parts of the overarching mythoi of Arda. Assumed some knowledge,
such as who Morgoth and Sauron are, what the Crossing of the Ice was, the
general impact of the Battle of Sudden Flame, and what happened at the
original Minas Tirith. But I'm not sure how much of that is strictly necessary:
I knew almost nil of the Silmarillion before I started reading Sil.
fanfic — that is, after all, why I went to read the original sources.
It is confusing. It is meant to be. It is, hopefully, not incomprehensible.
Viewpoint shifts without explanation are part of the story, as is figuring
them out. It is (by my assessment at least) fairly horrific, and is also
meant to be so. Hopefully, it is also something more.
What brought this howling back out of the dark to which it had long
been banished was one too many encounters with the question, "So what's
the big deal with Elves dying, anyway? They just get remade, so why is
it a problem?" Somehow I have a feeling that it's a little more than a
change of clothes…
As always, one is free to comment as one pleases via email (vze3b4pq@verizon.net)
and I will attempt to answer promptly.