"Hastaina" for pandemonium_213
Pandemonium is to credit (or maybe to blame? ;) for initiating my interest in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as first suggesting that the mythologies of Tolkien and Lovecraft could be combined quite intriguingly. When I finished a collection of Lovecraft stories over my winter holidays, I was immediately inspired to try blending the two
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Yet again, you've crafted another tailor-made gift of a story for me, Felagund. You captured Lovecraft's tone and atmosphere perfectly, and this goes far beyond the adroit use of "cyclopean", "stygian", and "eldritch" (all Loevcraftian words that I'm in love with). You really captured that shroud of darkness and decay that Lovecraft furled over his writings. The voice of the protagonist? Perfect. He could be an Elvish Daniel Upton. And what he discovers? This searing line says it all:
...all of the Valar, the Authors, writing their tales in our blood.
And Eru bellowing Pain. *shudders in delight and dread*
I can well imagine there are those who would cry heresy at this, but in many ways (preaching to the choir here), The Silmarillion is a tabula rasa, and yours is an interpretation that resonates with me in a big way.
Many thanks, Dawn! Truly a remarkable story and an honor to receive.
Aside from the loving homage to Lovecraft, the way you build the tension and the mystery is fantastic and certainly worthy of any of your Haunted October stories. In fact, Hastaina has earned its place in that compendium and how!
and it is amazing how well it fits with Tolkien's legendarium.
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the adroit use of "cyclopean", "stygian", and "eldritch"
I just had to throw them in! :D Actually, you were the first person I saw use eldritch in a story, that I recall--I remember that I had to look it up! And "decadent carvings" ... in "Mountains of Madness," I was actually starting to get tired of all of the "decadent carvings," so I had to nod to it here. :)
You really captured that shroud of darkness and decay that Lovecraft furled over his writings. The voice of the protagonist? Perfect. He could be an Elvish Daniel Upton.
Color me happy because I was deliberately trying to do both! My Lovecraft collection has an interesting essay that he wrote on horror-writing; of course, being all geeky over writing meta, it was a highlight for me. It spoke of how he sought to create a particular mood in his writing that he thought people would find frightening. That idea formed the basis for my writing here.
And, of course, the protagonist had to be a scholarly, slightly stuffy upper-class man! :D Though I couldn't resist giving him a cool heretic mother, at the least. ;)
I can well imagine there are those who would cry heresy at this
I've no doubt, though most of those people stopped reading (or at least commenting on) my work long ago. The last quote is really the point, though: It is in the texts that Eru created everything, including misery, in order to make the world a more beautiful place. If that isn't a chilling thought, I don't know what is. And if I'm remembering correctly, this idea persisted throughout the whole of the Legendarium, from the early drafts in BoLT to the later versions.
So those who want to imagine Eru as kind and benevolent while Melkor is some kind of aberration that Eru would rather not exist ... that doesn't hold water. Of course, this story takes that idea to more of an extreme.
Maybe I'll post this on ff.net just to get a laugh out of the cretinish comments I receive! :D With WebSense down, I should be able to get on ff.net too ... oh the temptation!
Many thanks, Dawn! Truly a remarkable story and an honor to receive.
Thank you so much--I'm thrilled that you liked it! :) As soon as the idea came to me, I thought of you ... and the timing turned out to be perfect as well.
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