As I noted over email, I'd read your story when you first posted it to the queue and I was making the schedule. I generally skim everything that comes in to get a sense of where it might belong in the season to which it belongs. I got hooked on yours, though, and ended up reading (not skimming!) the whole thing! Nonetheless, it was a pleasure to come back and read it more carefully and without the former time pressure.
I come away from my second reading with a strong sense of juxtaposition that pervades the story. Actually, one of the closing lines about sums it up for me: "Who is to say that I cannot have both love and power?"
What I love about your Aulendil/Mairon is that you don't shirk from making him brutal or empathetic. This is a fine line to walk and one that I rarely see handled with the skill you show. There is that juxtaposition: a man who tenderly remembers his daughter's infancy but imprisons her in Barad-dur (and considers the possibility of forcing her allegiance to him), who is nearly undone by his wife's death after sacking her city, who flays his best friend alive but refuses to allow the desecration of his corpse. Even the imagery in the story supports that juxtaposition: the warm autumn light beaming into a makeshift torture chamber or the cairns protected by holly and roses but also a "veil of confusion and dread." There is a simultaneous lust for and recognition of beauty in Mairon coupled with a desire to do anything to achieve it that produces such brutality as to produce exactly the opposite.
Excellent work yet again. This makes me all the more regretful that I have fallen behind in the Pandë!verse! :)
Huin, you did an awesome job with the artwork! My curiosity was piqued to see a piece described as using construction paper, but I love the simplicity of the piece, which seems to really capture the final scene of the story.
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I come away from my second reading with a strong sense of juxtaposition that pervades the story. Actually, one of the closing lines about sums it up for me: "Who is to say that I cannot have both love and power?"
What I love about your Aulendil/Mairon is that you don't shirk from making him brutal or empathetic. This is a fine line to walk and one that I rarely see handled with the skill you show. There is that juxtaposition: a man who tenderly remembers his daughter's infancy but imprisons her in Barad-dur (and considers the possibility of forcing her allegiance to him), who is nearly undone by his wife's death after sacking her city, who flays his best friend alive but refuses to allow the desecration of his corpse. Even the imagery in the story supports that juxtaposition: the warm autumn light beaming into a makeshift torture chamber or the cairns protected by holly and roses but also a "veil of confusion and dread." There is a simultaneous lust for and recognition of beauty in Mairon coupled with a desire to do anything to achieve it that produces such brutality as to produce exactly the opposite.
Excellent work yet again. This makes me all the more regretful that I have fallen behind in the Pandë!verse! :)
Huin, you did an awesome job with the artwork! My curiosity was piqued to see a piece described as using construction paper, but I love the simplicity of the piece, which seems to really capture the final scene of the story.