White Lady, With Lamp

May 24, 2011 12:33

It was she they wanted, Lady Wraithbane.

White Lady, With Lamp )

tolkien, fanfiction, drabble

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Comments 30

espresso_addict May 24 2011, 11:41:15 UTC
...the healing love can be strong as well as gentle.

Indeed! I never know what to say to your drabbles, but I'm enjoying the outpouring. And I love that icon :)

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altariel May 24 2011, 11:43:44 UTC
It's just great to know they're being read, EA. I appreciate every single shred of evidence that that's the case :-)

I'm going to follow this wave of creativity as long as it lasts, see where it takes me. It feels like there might be something substantial on the other side of it, but I shouldn't tempt fate.

I love the painting the icon is taken from vastly.

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espresso_addict May 24 2011, 12:58:18 UTC
I'm going to follow this wave of creativity as long as it lasts, see where it takes me.

Feels like spring rain to me. Here's hoping it continues to pour!

I love the painting the icon is taken from vastly.

It's utterly gorgeous. My favourite of Eissmann's F&E works, though the one before it with the starry cloak is pretty adorable too. (Though looking at some of the ones that make Faramir look more gaunt, lo, do I find my protagonist! Or at least a whitened-up version of him.)

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altariel May 24 2011, 13:14:39 UTC
the one before it with the starry cloak is pretty adorable too

Yes, that one is gorgeous. Grab him while you can, girl, for god's sake!

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lame_pegasus May 24 2011, 14:04:42 UTC
How utterly beautiful. Simply perfect.

*bows deeply*

You tempt me to collect those little marvels and post them on my site. There is more than one faithful reader who cauteously asks for a drabble or two from time to time. And how I'd love to show them these!

And why the heck did I write marbles first? Silly brain.

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altariel May 24 2011, 16:15:14 UTC
Thank you, very much.

And you have free rein to translate whatever you like. So do go ahead, if you think you'd enjoy doing it.

And I like "marbles"! Suits them - small, rounded, polished things, chinking together.

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watervole May 24 2011, 15:23:02 UTC
These short stories have the feeling of a consistent world behind them. Not just Tolkien's, but the Ithilien that you write about.

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altariel May 24 2011, 16:13:43 UTC
Thank you. It feels pretty strongly imagined in my mind, although I think a lot of that is Tolkien.

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azalaisdep May 24 2011, 16:29:50 UTC
What an intriguing idea. I've always struggled a bit with the way JRRT suddenly flips Eowyn from shield-maiden to "now I'll be all peaceful and plant gardens" - not because I think it's impossible, but he doesn't put any effort into making it a convincing change. It's as though he got to the end of the story, suddenly realised he'd allowed a woman to get out of the "healing/tending/nurturing" box (cage?) and hastily stuffed her back in it. So I do like Fourth Age fic which attempts to do what JRRT hand-waved.

I am wrestling, now, with the grammar of "it was she they wanted" - "it was she who did xyz", yes, but surely "it was her they wanted", as it would be "they wanted her" not "they wanted she"? Or am I completely confused?

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altariel May 24 2011, 17:15:12 UTC
Tolkien has an interesting aside about Éowyn in the Letters (244): "[S]he was not herself ambitious in the true political sense. Though not a 'dry nurse' in temper, she was also not really a soldier or 'amazon', but like many brave women was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis".

It seems to me that Éowyn wants freedom, and an active life - and in her culture, that means being a Rider. Instead she gets to watch Theoden get sicker. Later, she wants death, rather than wanting battle. But when she doesn't die, and when real freedom is offered - she takes it. Gondor will open up a bigger world to Éowyn than Rohan ever could. I think she would find many projects upon which to lavish her considerable energy and talents, and I imagined the one in the drabble as only a small part. Gondor's population is about to explode. Perhaps we could think of her as Minister for Health. (Part of what I was getting at with the Florence Nightingale allusion: statistician and health reformer, rather than Angel of Scutari.)

ETA: I wrote: Gondor ( ... )

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altariel May 24 2011, 20:48:25 UTC
It is yourself that has a way with pronouns.

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altariel May 25 2011, 08:18:55 UTC
Thank you. No trench warfare, although the Nazgul attacks during the siege of Minas Tirith must surely be Tolkien's narrativising of heavy bombardment. That must have took some coming back from.

As for some of the other men in this story, I was thinking of this bit in The Return of the King, as the Army of the West marches on the Black Gate:

So time and the hopeless journey wore away. Upon the fourth day from the Cross-roads and the sixth from Minas Tirith they came at last to the end of the living lands, and began to pass into the desolation that lay before the gates of the Pass of Cirith Gorgor; and they could descry the marshes and the desert that stretched north and west to the Emyn Muil. So desolate were those places and so deep the horror that lay on them that some of the host were unmanned, and they could neither walk nor ride further north ( ... )

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altariel May 25 2011, 09:39:32 UTC
Absolutely. So much of the book does.

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