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StarFire by Lindelea	6 Review(s)
Dreamflower	Reviewed Chapter: 37 on 9/2/2004
Well, it looks like Pippin is determined to make Ferdi be sensible. Why do I get the feeling it can't last?

nonniemous	Reviewed Chapter: 37 on 7/6/2004
(This is in response to Lindelea's reply to my earlier review) Hello, I didn't see the Pippin in your later stories as "boring", I saw him as mature and thoughtful. I am well aware of the pitfalls of both trying to do something "as we did it somewhere else" and the dysfunctions inherent in returning to a group that knows you as you were and not as you are. Present as you may see htem in your stories, those factors in your Pippin's behavior are overridden by the sufferings of Ferdi-the-Martyr at Pippin's hands and his negativity towards Pippin. I had hope for this particular story at the beginning, when Ferdi witnessed Pippin's asthma attack in the records room, but then things slid into Ferdi as the flawed-but-noble hobbit who understands all things and Pippin as the arrogant, heedless, feckless son-of-the-Took, who must learn what he can of nobility from Ferdi. This later Pippin doesn't match up with the hobbit you were writing earlier, even seen from a different point of view. And Ferdi, real or fabrication, no matter his supposed flaws, is an annoyingly self-righteous jerk. He comes off far too well no matter how badly he behaves. In "Runaway" he was the noble, misunderstood hero while Pippin was simply the Insensitive, Egotistical Jerk. There was nothing of the hobbits I know from books or movie--or your own interpretations prior to that--in that story. And I could NOT see the reconciliation of Pippin with his escort at that point--the betrayal was as deep as it was uncharacteristic and it did not work at all for me. Quite honestly, I don't think the Pippin you're writing in these later stories would have been the hobbit that was such good friends with Frodo Baggins or the hobbit who went on the Quest in the book. Maybe so in the movie, but still, that hobbit was innocent and naive about the larger world and out for fun because he has never had a need to do otherwise. He was still the hobbit who later sacrificed himself several times over for the larger good. I've known and do know people who were pranksters at that age. They have grown up, some to be good and some as bad human beings; the bad ones would not have done what Pippin did on the Quest--and the good ones matured rapidly and would have done so even more rapidly had they lived through events such as the War of the Ring. So in my opinion, Pippin's experience in the school of hard knocks may not have been of as great duration as your Ferdi's has, but I think what it lacked in lenght it more than made up for in intensity. Add to that the history you gave him in the estrangement from his father and the physical difficulties he's had to endure even before returning to Tookland, he would be more mature than most folks his age--and not nearly so crass and thoughtless as he is in this story. Teens can, in my personal experience, be thoughtless and manipulative, but there is also the matter of heart and personality. It's not that I wish to avoid a negative portrayal of Pippin as such, but I would see what is, to me, an honest portrayal of him, and I do believe you are selling him far short in your current stories. I haven't yet looked at "Thain" because I didn't want to see more of the Pippin-with-no-redeeming-qualities-within-himself. Perhaps the difference in our point of views on this is simply that you are writing your Pippin as an homage to your friend, and because I did not know your friend (though I have had friends and family like him, even to his untimely death) I don't see the reflections of him in Pippin that you do. There's nothing wrong with basing a fictional character on someone in real life, or taking elements of someone's character and life and translating them into story. But perhaps it would be better to give those things to an original character rather than one less well-defined by canon, be it movie or book. Thank you for your response; I honestly came back to see if my comment had been deleted--as I've seen happen to other reviewers in other fandoms. You have written some fine stories and I've enjoyed them. My best to you. P.S. --"Flames" is revisionist history since you are looking at it from a different point of view and with a different agenda. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a different way to see things. Author Reply: Ah, well, delete your review? One that was obviously carefully composed? Just because we disagree? Author Reply: Was going to say this in that amazingly brief reply just now, thought the better of it, then said, what the heck. The only thing that really bothered me about the review is that it was anonymous. It nags at me, you see, thinking perhaps you're someone I might know, for I'm robbed of the chance for meaningful dialogue. Such is life. The Pippin in "Thain" is going to be a rather self-absorbed tween, but I think you might be pleasantly surprised. (Then again, maybe not.) He'll make mistakes, as most of us do, and do things that are stupid or headstrong, but he'll also show real quality. But then, I wish to allow for character growth. All the best! Author Reply: Thank you for your email, making you no longer anonymous. I mis-spoke earlier, in saying Ferdi is a fabrication. In truth he is a synthesis--a mix of characteristics from several very real people. (No wonder my friends don't read my stories... they're probably afraid of recognising themselves! ...though most of my characterisations are drawn from the past, not the present, so they're safe... until about twenty years from now, perhaps.

nonniemous	Reviewed Chapter: 37 on 7/5/2004
As much as I have enjoyed your stories, I'm really, really getting tired of Ferdi-the-Paragon-of-All-Hobbit-Virtues teaching Pippin-the-Feckless all things about honor and valor and honesty and more. I much preferred the Pippin from your earlier stories, who may have been a bit heedless, but was not the self-centered, knee-jerk egotist that inhabits these later stories. Given your own canon, where Pippin learned much of his Stewardship from the Master of Buckland, I'd be seriously worried about the state of affairs there, since Ferdi seems to have a great deal to teach Pippin about life in general and Stewardship in particular even after Pippin's years under Saradoc's and Merry's tutelage. I'm sorry for the negative comment; as I said, I have greatly enjoyed your stories in the past. You are one of the few LOTR fanfic authors I read any more, and Jewels and your other, earlier post- and pre-quest tales were lovely reads. The revisionist history concerning Pippin from Ferdi's point of view worked quite well in the first story, ("Flames", I believe) and it was an interesting literary exercise to see those events from such a different point of view character. And I could buy it then that he would see Pippin in a less than favorable light. However, I can't match the Pippin in these further stories with the Pippin I know and love from the books or the movies--or your own earlier stories. He's become a lighter version of your Paladin, not himself. And I miss that Pippin a great deal. Author Reply: Thanks for being honest. The following is a sort of explanation of the character growth I've set out on an imaginary timeline, from "spoilt and feckless Pippin" to "wise and beloved Thain". It's not meant to sound defensive, and you don't have to read it if you don't want to. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, though, whether it makes sense to you or sounds like total nonsense in your ears. Funny, some folk were criticising the Pippin in my later stories for being so boring, settled as he'd become, wise in his judgments, considerate of others. I thought I'd go back earlier on the timeline and explore some of his early character growth. If you were to place this story on the timeline it would be set a year before the end of "Flames", when Pippin has just returned to Tookland and is trying to fit in with the Tooks once more. He cannot act as a Bucklander, for they already suspect him to be an "outsider". (Have you ever noticed that when you come into a group and say, "But this is the way we did it [somewhere else] and it worked really really well there", people shoot you down? Been there, done that.) There's something else at work here that perhaps you might not acknowledge, but that I've seen from personal experience. You can leave your old place behind, with the old, foolish (dysfunctional) ways of interacting with people, and begin a new life, build yourself into a new (and functional) person, and yet when you go back "home" (years later!) you find yourself falling into the same patterns of interaction unless you consciously work at not doing so. Thus I've tried to show Pippin in these "early Thain" stories as an odd mixture of wisdom gained through experience (in his charity to gaffers, his handling of Everard, though it doesn't come into this particular story, his willingness to admit to mistakes--a very un-Tookish thing to do) and falling back into old (foolish) patterns (e.g. in his manipulation of Ferdibrand and his attempt to make the end justify the means). Yet there is hope, for he has recognised his faul by this point in the story and has tried to get Ferdi to work with him rather than trying to manipulate him. Granted, he is a jerk in "Runaway". I don't even like him there, and nearly abandoned the story as unworkable. His only defence would be that he panicked when his son disappeared, as he had been thinking along the lines of ruffians before anything happened. Sometimes when you fear something enough, it happens... or even if it doesn't, you think it does... Don't know if that makes sense. Anyhow, I'm not completely happy with that story, though I've left it because Jo did such a marvellous job of salvaging it from the junk-heap. He's also a jerk in "Thain", but then he's a tween, spoilt by his family and very self-centered. You likely won't want to read that story if you don't like to read a negative portrayal of Pippin. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy but I'd get bored with him if he were without flaw from beginning to end. Character growth is challenging to write. Ferdi's really no paragon, though I admit I'm rather fond of him when he's not being irritating. He's stubborn, proud, reckless, overconfident, prejudiced, all sorts of bad things. He's also brave, loyal, and honest, but then nobody's perfectly bad or perfectly good. What I really hate about him is the way he falls into a trance when he just cannot bear what's happening--seems quite cowardly sometimes and I just want to strangle him (if you catch my drift). But I established it as a facet of his personality and I can use it to further a plot; guess I'm as manipulative as certain of my characters, aren't I? In an earlier story I wanted to set him up as a hobbit who could have been Thain under different circumstances. He's not better than Pippin, by no means! But he's older... he has the benefit of seven years' more life experience, and he's not led all that sheltered a life. Okay... okay... so the Quest is not exactly what you'd call "a sheltered life" (though the way some people write Pippin being smothered by his cousins' care, you wonder sometimes!). But from the age of 19, Ferdi's definitely come by way of the "school of hard knocks" to where he is by this time, and in the early chapters of this story he was still showing the bruises from it. Anyhow, after "Runaway", when you start getting into later stories (starting from the time of "At the End of His Rope") the two cousins are on a par. There's mutual respect and affection, and both are (for the most part) grown-ups. Pippin, if anything, has the edge over his older cousin, for he's more imaginative and creative and less bound by tradition, either by dint of innate rebelliousness channelled into something more mature, or because he's seen the wider world, or maybe a combination of both. Pippin as I write him is actually based on a real person, someone I knew and loved and who irritated the heck out of me at times. But I miss him terribly. He grew from that same sort of self-centered, spoilt, irritating younger person I grew up with into a mature person I was proud to know, before his untimely death. He would have been the first to laugh (and shake his head in chagrin) at a portrayal of his earlier immature self. Ferdi, on the other hand, is a fabrication. Perhaps that's why he doesn't always come across as "real". Author Reply: Sorry to batter you with that l-o-o-o-o-ong reply. Why, SoA even timed out, guess it got bored. Anyhow, just wanted to say, that's the long and short (okay, not short) of the relationship as I've written it. FWIW, this may well be the last "early Thain" story to suffer through, though the Muse may not be quite done tormenting Ferdi--there's a story where he goes to Gondor with a young Faramir on the back burner. Teens can be quite self-centered, did you know? (At least in my experience they are. Can't seem to help themselves, or else don't have enough life experience yet to give them perspective.) For that matter, "Thain" shows Pippin in his tweens, which seems to correspond to the teen years in our culture. So as I said, you might want to avoid that one, or just read the "Bucca" chapters and forget the Paladin-Pippin chapters. OTOH, it's quite the challenge, to show Paladin's transformation from a basically decent hobbit (as written in "Pearl of Great Price" and "Cousins and Other Nuisances") to the unpleasant fellow I made him out to be in earlier writings... Author Reply: p.s. Just noticed that you didn't give an address and so likely won't see these replies. Ah, well, then I'm writing this for my own use (as is often the case), thinking through the characters. If anyone cares to read it, to catch a glimpse of "background", then welcome. Actually, I had trouble reconciling Pippin of the movies to Pippin of the books; in the first movie he was a jerk, stealing Maggot's crops on a regular basis, and for the better part of the trilogy was portrayed as a clown (guess that was the "fool of a Took"), only coming into his own partway through the last movie (and poor Merry came off worse, IMO, and he wasn't even a "fool of a Brandybuck" in the book...). It was only after a reviewer pointed me to some hints that hobbit tweens were mischievous and hobbits were fond of jokes that I became reconciled to the tricksters portrayed in the movie version. The Pippin in "Thain" at least is going to follow the book rather than the movie: he will become "good friends" with Farmer Maggot in that story. As a farmer's son, he would be less likely to steal another farmer's crops, I think. (Cookies, now, from his own aunt's seemingly inexhaustible supply... well, that's another matter). "Flames" is revisionist history? Really? How so?

Bodkin	Reviewed Chapter: 37 on 7/5/2004
Glad Ferdi is recovering - and that he seems to be learning to manipulate Pippin. Love Woodruff. What a hobbit. Author Reply: Ah, those manipulative Tooks... Thanks!

Connie	Reviewed Chapter: 37 on 7/5/2004
Glad to see you working on this one again. Sorry to hear about your loss, though. I meant to write you earlier and say so, but life is really busy right now. I'm really getting curious to see who does win the All Shire Race. I think it will be Ferdi on the stalion, but any story can have an unexpected twist. Thanks. Connie. Author Reply: KWYM about busy life. I appreciate your taking the time to comment! As for plot developments, well, hopefully there are a few surprises yet to be seen.

Lyta Padfoot	Reviewed Chapter: 37 on 7/5/2004
So Ferdi had a visit from the 'While You were Out' crew? Or was it 'Surprise by Design'? The Woodruff/Ferdi interction was priceless. Author Reply: While You Were Out? Sounds intriguing. How nice it would be to go out and come back and find everything beautified. Thanks for commenting!

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