The Righteous Indignation of the FanFic Writer

[sharpeslass]

Someone replied to a very old story of mine and informed me that the LotR line (cribbed from the book's narrative and given to Grima to deliver to Eowyn in the film) was not "a hutch to trammel some wild thing in" but "a hunched tremmelsome wild thing

Comments

[7veilsphaedra]

Someone is putting you on.

"A hutch to trammel some wild thing in ..." is perfect English. The other phrase is gobbledygook.

And your soul is neither hunched nor tremmelsome.

[7veilsphaedra]

Here is the direct quote, from "Houses of the Healing" in Return of the King:

Gandalf: "Think you the Wormtongue had poison only for Théoden's ears? Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs? Have you not heard those words before? Saruman spoke them, the teacher of Wormtongue. Though I do not doubt that Wormtongue at home wrapped their meaning in terms more cunning. My lord, if your sister's love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained, you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?"

So, there you go: a direct quote from Tolkein. I have the original Houghton Mifflin print version, too.

[7veilsphaedra]

"... restrained her lips ..." *ahem*

[sharpeslass]

*victory dances around the apartment as the walls of my bower close in about me*

Thank you!!!

Now. Everyone on my flist should go to ff.net and spam that person (who actually left the comment in 2009, but I only just noticed it today) and tell her she is stoopid. Yeah. Except no one should actually read the fic, because it was one of the first things I wrote and kinda sucks (not enough to turn the entire Tolkien oeuvre into excrement, but still not great; mind you, it has a small but dedicated following).

[7veilsphaedra]

Never mind about the fic, did she even read the book?

[sharpeslass]

Apparently she read it when she was eleven. Five whole years ago. I decided it would be immature to let her know that I'd read it for the first time when I was nine (32 years ago). Of course, is it any more mature to share that fact with you? I don't know. I may just be hopeless. (;

[7veilsphaedra]

I'm not sure how maturity comes into it, unless it's a competition. I also read the series ages ago in that awkward late elementary/early junior high school Bildungsroman period. Can't remember the exact age, except that I absolutely craved some sort of external adult authority figures that I could respect, and there was enough variation from Hobbits to Gandalf and Aragorn to the elf-races that my itch was satisfied, even if they were make-belief. I was reeling in shock from, both, Anne Frank's Diary and a book I had picked up at the library that I thought was an adult fairy tale about Baba Yaga and turned out to be an account of the concentration camp, Sobibor. So my faith in humanity and my heart had been shattered pretty severely. The fantasy was necessary for building that back up again.

How is your 7thnight story coming along? Have you been re-energized yet?

[sharpeslass]

That is interesting... LotR was a balm for WWII for you and it was written in part as a reaction against WWI. It is nice to have clear cut good and evil in fiction sometimes. It makes a break from the complicated shades of grey in reality. And the themes of loyalty and friendship and trust are all rather lovely as well.

Um... I'm waffling back and forth between two stories and not fully committing to either. It will be done though. It will be.

[7veilsphaedra]

I don't think that early adolescence is a good time for shades of grey. I know some educators are very fond of trying to push it onto them, but I agree with Rudolph Steiner in that children at that age had a need for demi-gods and goddesses and heroes and heroines of the purest and strongest variety, and if these needs are not satisfied while they are still children, they cannot move on and create room in their psyches for more subtle expressions of humanity. They learn some fundamental lessons through the white vs. black world at that stage, but it's not a place in which to sit with arrested development.

[sharpeslass]

I agree with you so much. There is so much time (the greater portion of our lives) for disappointment and disillusionment. We were shown Roots when I was in third grade and my sister only in second (another more literal "white vs. black"). It gave my poor sister screaming nightmares and stressed me out, made me feel guilty and made me aware of racism, which I was blissfully ignorant of up until that point. It could have waited. It really, really could have

[7veilsphaedra]

"Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend."

Stephen King

Someone on my f-list posted that awhile back, and I was all "Ooh, I've got to thank that person, because I love the way their brain works" but got distracted by someone else being wrong on the internet.

(And, speaking of wrongness on the interwarbles, my sympathies are with the person who objected to that comment about the 'correct' way to name Jeep/Hakuryuu! There was something that was just a bit snotty and insufferable and bristly about that "Ur doing it wrong" comment.)

BTW, sorry to hear about the terrible, horrible, no-good house sale nonsense. I hope you find a dreamy place soon.

[sharpeslass]

Yes. Brilliant!!! (I like King's editorials and book reviews better than I like his books, actually!)

(You mean the quote where she said "well, actually, he shouldn't be "jeep" because he won't be in "jeep" form?" To me that one did seem a bit... like she was taking a swipe at the asker's intelligence (even though the asker was actually being canon true).

[7veilsphaedra]

Ack! You made me go back and read through that nonsense again.

No, the one which said "blah, blah, blah ... because it doesn't matter what form he's in, Jeep is his name ... blah, blah, blah ..."

[sharpeslass]

(sorry about that!!) ...but Jeep is his name!!! *ducks rocks*

*sniff*

[7veilsphaedra]

That's "Your Royal Majesty, King Goujun" to ... well, everyone except Hakkai and Sanzo.

Re: *sniff*

[sharpeslass]

Ah!! You do not lie!! I stand corrected. *bows belatedly to the Dragon King of the Western Seas* (or wherever he's from... "Jimmy-Joe's Discount Jeeps & Jalopies", perhaps?).

Really, how could that stern, regal, and very icy chap have turned into cuddly, lovable Jipu? I've never been able to wrap my brain around that one. Hakkai's transformation from "guy with a hoarding proclivity" to "guy who is an obsessive-compulsive neat-freak" is nothing compared to Gojun's post-death personality scramble.