Hands Wide Open for talullahred by ladyelleth

[ladyelleth]

Author name: Elleth
Recipient's name: talullahred
Title: Hands Wide Open
Rating: PG
Request: Set in Eglarest, naturally with seascapes, preferably wintery, but it's up to you. We get a glimpse at the daily life of the city. Something gets lost.
Author's notes: My recipient may recognize a joke and a minor element in this fic. Consider it an homage to some

Comments

[ladyelleth]

Thank you so, so much for such a glowing review! (And can I say now how happy I was to see you review my LotR SeSa fic as well? It's always a challenge - in a good way - to write for someone I didn't know, but knowing one of my fics wasn't a complete miss was a big relief!)

I haven't seen Marco Polo yet, though have heard interesting things about it, and a friend picspamming about the show was what brought the Easterlings to the forefront of my mind as well. I'd planned to write a glimpse of Eglarest through the eyes of visitors anyway (your request was so beautifully open towards that!), but with that visual influence and the mention of ship patrols from Brithombar and Eglarest for enemies, things just began coming together. It also helped that reading about your Galdor cracked me up, so he very quickly made himself into a part of the cast, and one I think I'm not going to get rid of easily now!

And of course the women couldn't just be relegated to the roles of wife and mother - one of my biggest beefs with Tolkien is that most of his female characters are so underdescribed, and in this case it also runs counter to actual Mongolian culture; that became very clear after a short time of research already, and was not something I was willing to do, so I'm glad that worked out well, too!

Thank you so much for everything - enjoying this, the compliments on both the story and the writing, and being so lovely and gracious. It was a pleasure writing for you! :)

[talullahred]

:) Thank you.