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15minuteficlets exercise.
Feb. 17th, 2004 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynI ran over the time by about five minutes. This is because I was foolish enough to allow that bloody plotbunny a little extra time in my head. I ran with the idea that Middle-Earth developed into a world very like our own, but different in a few regards. Since Tolkien specifically ruled out the existence of Christianity or an incarnate God in Middle-Earth, I find it very hard to work the history enough to make it come out as our world, unless you want to say that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob came along afterwards and picked up where Eru Iluvatar left off... which I am not about to do.
Anyway. This is my twenty minutes or so, from one of the scientists most directly involved in the events of the plotbunny. The world in which she operates is about at the 1930's level of development, with tinges of pulp here and there to goose things along.
Today's word: disguise.
When I was a little girl, my father often took me to see the collections of Tiryat University's Museum of Antiquities. Not the ones that the public saw, usually - that was easy enough to see on my own, or on a school trip. My father was one of the Museum stewards. He had keys to the secret places of the Museum, vast silent rows of shelves with every kind of artifact there ever was. . . everything the University ever had, everything that they wanted to learn more of before putting out for the public to see. The Hallows, he called it. The place between the world of the living and the world of legend, where the oldest fragments of our world before the Grinding Ice could still be found.
I wonder if he ever knew what that kind of talk could do to a growing girl's mind? . . .No matter.
I remember those trips well, the more so because my father was as silent as stones. He said it was best to stay so, in the presence of things long gone. Little love for the chatter of the public, my father had. I think he took the position he did so that he might protect his beloved fragments from the visitors, instead of sharing them. he was like that sometimes.
We walked down this aisle or that, the lamps around us flickering quietly. Tiryat's power supply was never the best, but I didn't mind. There was something about the unsteady light of those decrepit bulbs that made the past seem more real somehow, as if the light were struggling to reach us from across thousands of years, through the walls of ice that scoured away the northern places of the world. When my father showed me a bit of sword-blade, forged by methods we still haven't figured out to this day, that feeble light meant I could all but see flames glittering coldly along its edges. The scroll-scraps I could never touch, nor could anyone else, but the ancient tingwah letters seemed very nearly alive under that light. Shards of Shireling crockery, bits of steelsilver that might've once been someone's corselet- all of it seemed more right in that dimness. None of it seemed quite the same after we left- memory fades swiftly in the bright light of day- but I knew it would still be there when we returned.
What I remember most, though, was the stone. That was the only name my father ever used for it: the stone. Poor name, if you ask me, since 'stone' implies ordinary rock and the thing was fashioned from some kind of smoky, unbreakable crystal, but that was what he called it. I think it had to do with the thing being supposedly a replica of the Erikston megalith. He always said that with a snort, as if he would've liked to tear that idea apart. Once, he told me that it was his belief that the stone was the original, and that the black sphere of rock at Erikston was the duplicate. He rested his hand on it- very strange, considering how reverent he was of the other artifacts- and smiled sadly.
"Sulen," he said then, "history is nothing but a name we put on what we think we know. Words are as much a disguise as any false face. Tiryat was more than we have ever made it, once. . ."
"Before the Ice, papa?"
"Yes." He looked down at the stone, and sighed. "But there are some things we can never say," he murmured. "The world has changed, and all the days of their lives are gone out of the memory of Men."
I didn't dare ask him more. He died without ever explaining, some months later. Maybe he foreknew his death; he certainly had his affairs in order. His last wish was that I find some way of using the money he left me to explore the Sea. The land changed under the hands of Men, he said; but the Sea did not forget, and would one day yield up all its secrets. If I truly loved the past he'd revealed to me, I should look there.
My first craft is to be dedicated today.
Disguises mean nothing in the Deep.
Anyway. This is my twenty minutes or so, from one of the scientists most directly involved in the events of the plotbunny. The world in which she operates is about at the 1930's level of development, with tinges of pulp here and there to goose things along.
Today's word: disguise.
When I was a little girl, my father often took me to see the collections of Tiryat University's Museum of Antiquities. Not the ones that the public saw, usually - that was easy enough to see on my own, or on a school trip. My father was one of the Museum stewards. He had keys to the secret places of the Museum, vast silent rows of shelves with every kind of artifact there ever was. . . everything the University ever had, everything that they wanted to learn more of before putting out for the public to see. The Hallows, he called it. The place between the world of the living and the world of legend, where the oldest fragments of our world before the Grinding Ice could still be found.
I wonder if he ever knew what that kind of talk could do to a growing girl's mind? . . .No matter.
I remember those trips well, the more so because my father was as silent as stones. He said it was best to stay so, in the presence of things long gone. Little love for the chatter of the public, my father had. I think he took the position he did so that he might protect his beloved fragments from the visitors, instead of sharing them. he was like that sometimes.
We walked down this aisle or that, the lamps around us flickering quietly. Tiryat's power supply was never the best, but I didn't mind. There was something about the unsteady light of those decrepit bulbs that made the past seem more real somehow, as if the light were struggling to reach us from across thousands of years, through the walls of ice that scoured away the northern places of the world. When my father showed me a bit of sword-blade, forged by methods we still haven't figured out to this day, that feeble light meant I could all but see flames glittering coldly along its edges. The scroll-scraps I could never touch, nor could anyone else, but the ancient tingwah letters seemed very nearly alive under that light. Shards of Shireling crockery, bits of steelsilver that might've once been someone's corselet- all of it seemed more right in that dimness. None of it seemed quite the same after we left- memory fades swiftly in the bright light of day- but I knew it would still be there when we returned.
What I remember most, though, was the stone. That was the only name my father ever used for it: the stone. Poor name, if you ask me, since 'stone' implies ordinary rock and the thing was fashioned from some kind of smoky, unbreakable crystal, but that was what he called it. I think it had to do with the thing being supposedly a replica of the Erikston megalith. He always said that with a snort, as if he would've liked to tear that idea apart. Once, he told me that it was his belief that the stone was the original, and that the black sphere of rock at Erikston was the duplicate. He rested his hand on it- very strange, considering how reverent he was of the other artifacts- and smiled sadly.
"Sulen," he said then, "history is nothing but a name we put on what we think we know. Words are as much a disguise as any false face. Tiryat was more than we have ever made it, once. . ."
"Before the Ice, papa?"
"Yes." He looked down at the stone, and sighed. "But there are some things we can never say," he murmured. "The world has changed, and all the days of their lives are gone out of the memory of Men."
I didn't dare ask him more. He died without ever explaining, some months later. Maybe he foreknew his death; he certainly had his affairs in order. His last wish was that I find some way of using the money he left me to explore the Sea. The land changed under the hands of Men, he said; but the Sea did not forget, and would one day yield up all its secrets. If I truly loved the past he'd revealed to me, I should look there.
My first craft is to be dedicated today.
Disguises mean nothing in the Deep.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-17 11:33 am (UTC)If I ever perfect the 48 hour day, I'm going to give it to you to write in!
no subject
Date: 2004-02-17 12:51 pm (UTC)(plotbunnies are evil though, aren't they? *L*)
Great Plot bunny!
Date: 2004-02-18 10:22 pm (UTC)But anyway, great plot bunny much better than alot of the Fellowship or Elves in Modern Earth like things than I've read. Though they aren't as bad/prevaliant as most Sues I've read. That could be, however, because I avoid most of the "Legolas lives in Modern Earth and Meets me!" stories.
Very interesting. He (the father) knows suspects about about the elves. Seems like they Vala have kept up the ban against sea travel into the West.
Blah Okay. I'm rambling.
Re: Great Plot bunny!
Date: 2004-02-19 05:02 am (UTC)The black sphere at Erikston is the Stone of Erech, where Aragorn called the Dead to service. It's described as a half-sphere or half-buried sphere of black rock in the book.
The story of what Amrin saw wound up being edited and polished and posted in
no subject
Date: 2004-02-20 06:52 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 07:08 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 08:41 am (UTC)Hm. Hadn't reckoned on that, but yes... I suppose I didn't think of it because Tolkien was a pretty devout Christian. One wonders a bit about where the Chosen People would wind up, given what happened the last time anybody got given a land all of their own. (sploosh, glub, glub, glub...)
Considering the amount of weight Islam puts on Yeshua ben Miryam as a prophet, I assumed that any world without Christianity would also lack Islam.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 02:33 pm (UTC)Well, yes, but then I don't think anyone brought a living pagan deity bound hand and foot to Jerusalem to do the Ass Dance of Victory in his face. Which is pretty much what the Numenoreans did, isn't it?
I'm not sure how useful this would be, but have you read John M Ford's The Dragon Waiting? It deals with an alternative 15th Century Europe in which Christianity never took hold and there is a myriad of other religions instead.
Can't say I have, no. I meant to once. Slipped my mind, I guess.
More to the point, just because something isn't true, that doesn't mean people won't believe in it.
Alas, I am all too aware of this. I suppose what it comes down to in the end is that I'm trying to limit the number of mistaken beliefs sprung out of the past. One of the really annoying premises of many fantasy works is that either Legends Are Completely True, If A Bit Framgentary- or else Legends Are Utter And Total Lies. The person who digs up fragments of the past either has his beliefs about long-dead stories completely confirmed despite people around him saying he's insane, or discovers that everything he and his people believe was nothing but a lie- or if the belief is no longer active, that the legend was nothing but fabrication and the truth too strange for anyone to handle. Legends that were fragmented and embroidered upon but that still had the odd bit of truth to them? Fine. An entire massive world-spanning belief system that turned out to be utter human-created bupkis? Not cool.
The Haradrim, I think, may have had a tiny amount of interaction with the Eru / Valar belief system- if only because Gandalf says that in the South he was known as 'Incanus', and he never said exactly how far south he got. That may have only been the folk of Near Harad, though. If Harad is anything like the equatorial nations of our world, all you would have to do to find Haradrim who'd never heard of Incanus would be to head over a mountain range or two. The East definitely did, or at least parts of it- Saruman, Alatar, and Pallando all went east, but only Saruman came back. Tolkien said he did not know what became of the Ithryn Luin but that he figured they probably failed in their mission and only established a bunch of secret cults and 'magical' traditions. I'm not so sure they failed, myself... but then that's what Hara's dialogue is about.
*ahem* Anyway. There are those factors, but most important is probably my purely OOC reason. Namely, I didn't want to say 'Christianity? Lie. Islam? Also lie. Judaism? Right tree, wrong orchard.' So... different future develops out of different past. *shrug* I like to think that what I have in mind is feasible and possible given the original material. I also like to think that this reply does not boil down to the whiny fanfic author's cry of 'it's my story & I can do what I want!!!!111!!!1!'. Please, do let me know if I am wrong.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-21 08:14 am (UTC)In that case I am definitely looking forward to it! I found a nice little fic on the Henneth Annun website last night about an Oliphaunt tender/retired mahout; it was my first glimpse into how anyone in fanfiction renders any of the Haradrim. I'd love to see what you've got in mind for them.
I should probably work out a bit about them for the Tiryat University time frame myself- whole peoples did migrate southward en masse to escape the Grinding Ice, after all. Right now I've only got cultural/religious ideas for the various Easterlings, both those who were originally on Sauron's side and those who weren't. Hara Nuan's nation, for example. But I'm still working on that.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-21 11:28 am (UTC)The Sand Circle. I bookmarked it.
Anyway, I had to come up with quite a lot of things for the various Haradrim cultures in my fic - history, culture, habits, languages, philosophies, food... And that's even without mentioning the Far Haradrim, er, "doublethink" between officialdom and reality or the frisson between the Haradrim immigrants living in Gondor and their children (hey, I enjoy this assimilation vs tradition stuff). Honestly, I think I will reach a point in which my support materials are longer than the fic itself. :-p
Ah, see, now you've gone and done it. My undergraduate degrees are in Anthropology (admittedly, health-sciences-oriented- I was planning on a public health career at the time- but with a heavy cultural slant towards Asian societies) and Religion. And after I graduated, I studied food prep and hospitality management at the local county college for a while... so when you throw a properly constructed culture at me, along with decently researched culturally appropriate food? Got my attention, all right.
And if you want to tell me more, I'm all ears!
I'll let you know when I've got the details properly nailed. Right now it's all a bit up in the air- but I do know that at some point shortly after the retreat of the Grinding Ice, the surviving Easterling cultures are drawn together into a coalition that eventually becomes known as Imperial Rhun. That day has long since passed by Sulen's time- the Empire fell, leaving behind many small nations and a core area now referred to as Old Runeland by the peoples of the West- but it was a glorious time indeed to be an Easterling, that Age was...
Re:
Date: 2004-02-21 01:14 pm (UTC)*looks at link*
*looks at post*
*claps hand over face* Sweet Mother of Mares... ai. You'd think I'd have NOTICED a thing like that. I must admit that aside from "Aglarond", I don't think I even glanced at the names of the authors on the fics I read last night. That was the first time I visited Henneth Annun, which is really my only excuse.
I also come from a family that places a great deal of importance on cultural heritage (most of it concerning food, it has to be said), so I have always felt interested in learning more about other rituals and other forms of thought, speech, dress etc. I really had to leap at the chance of creating a few cultures practically from scratch, you know... *g*
Oh, naturally. Remind me to show you the background work I've done on my Neolithic people the Aftherai at some point- I've got enough background info on them to sink a destroyer, but I'm still doing up the first actual fiction about them, and it never hurts to have someone who properly knows their business look things over to see if you've missed anything.
Indeed! Did the Grinding Ice signal the end of the Fourth Age?
That it did. Men can fight many battles and outlast many inhuman memories, but when the glaciers roll down over the land even the greatest of kingdoms must get out of the way. The Grinding Ice ended the Fourth Age, eventually retreating; the Fifth Age was mostly a time of Empires, and ended with the fall of Rhun and its dissolution into the little countries of the East.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-21 08:07 am (UTC)Phew. Okay. I realised as I looked back at what I had been saying- and as I looked at my motivations- that, really, to a certain extent it boiled down to 'I'm writing it this way because that's how I want to see it, nyah'. I wasn't sure if I was explaining myself correctly, or even if it made any sense. The last thing I want is to wrench a world away from its original author's intent purely by my own fiat; if I'm going to take something and change it, I want to have good, solid justification, even if it is a bit on the peculiar side. Unjustified / unjustifiable changes make me twitch.