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| The Breach in the Walls by Ecthelion of the fountain | 3 Review(s) |
|---|---|
| Starlight and Moonlight | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 9/10/2018 |
| This is so deep! You are a truly talented writer. | |
| Rhapsody | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 5/3/2007 |
| This piece is so full of tension and angst. This is a great exploration of Maeglin's thoughts and motivations: bitter, powerless and Idril's responses here leaves me wondering how she could not have seen this coming. Your writing is great and you keep the readers attention effortlessly throughout this piece. I know you also posted a Celegorm story here, and I wanted to read & review it... is it under construction? I hope to see that back soon! Author Reply: Thank you, Rhapsody. The story is actually a Maeglin POV. He manipulated many facts to serve his own justification of betrayal, which is fairly common for 'bad guys', I suppose. However, since it's POV, the opinions are inevitably biased. For example, as you've noticed, Idril seems to be weak in the story; and part of the reason will be that Maeglin was deliberately looking down at her when he declared his victory over her. I'm really flattered to see your praise about my writing. I have some language issues indeed...I hid Sad But True, the Celegorm story, for this reason. I have to correct a lot of word choice problems and grammatical errors. So, if you see anything weird or you feel it's jarring, please feel free to let me know. I'm more than happy to correct them. Thanks again. -Ec | |
| French Pony | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 3/15/2007 |
| An interesting take on Maeglin's state of mind at the end. There's something very detached about this story. That does seem to underscore Maeglin's total separation from the Noldor, and indeed all the Elves, at this point in his life. He appears to have dealt with the implications of his plan for the destruction of Gondolin by dissociating so that he's not really "there" to see the fall of his home and the woman he loved. On the other hand, I did miss some sense of the destruction that would have been going on around them, the fire and the falling buildings, the heat and the clogged air. Author Reply: Thank you so much for the valuable opinion! Actually I must appreciate your insight - detachment and dissociation were exactly the feeling I intended to create in the story. I made Maeglin look at the destruction of the city he loved 'afar', which indicates his inability of facing his own choice of betrayal and the consequences of his own action. The logic behind his thoughts is twisted and manipulated too. He justified his action by: 1) emphasizing his own woes; 2) blaming it on Idril for the Doom of the Noldor she and her people bear (although a moment ago he claimed he was a Noldo, half in blood but full in heart); 3) claiming that there is neither choice nor free will, and that whatever happens has been planned and doomed. I wondered before that how exactly Morgoth had turned Maeglin into such an absolute traitor. No doubt that the Dark Lord knew very well the weakness both in Elves and Men. But is Maeglin's biggest weakness his love for Idril? I am rather a logical creature, and I tend to think that he had a better reason than that - for an elf who has seen beauty and splendor, what is the sweetness of forcing a woman who would hate you forever to be your wife and ruling a city like Angband? Therefore I created the reason 3) above for him. The realization of no choice and no free will is what finally caught him. He was convinced that choices are merely illusion and that all his struggle would be in vain, given the most powerful evidence that everything had followed a grand 'fate' that he could neither grasp nor change - the Doom of the Noldor and the curse his father laid upon him. He clung to this explanation for its convenience, but he knew deep in his heart it was not entirely the truth, which resulted in his 'watching afar'. | |