Henneth Annûn Story Archive

We've all heard of the great romances and deep love felt between characters like Beren and Luthien, Galadriel and Celeborn, Aragorn and Arwen, etc. But what about the ones that went ... sour? Feanor and Nerdanel, Turin and Niniel, and others. Were they better off as bachelors and bachelorettes? Here's the general idea: married characters discussing the pros and cons of marriage with the unmarried ones, while the unmarried people do the same with bachelor status. (Fear my run-on sentences!) This could be humor, drama, whatever! Believe me, I know all you wonderful authors out there could turn this incredibly stupid sounding idea into a work of art. So what do you say?

 

Hm. I've been meaning to answer for awhile--sorry, I've not been very good about this!

I think possibly this comes at the wrong moment--between Mary Sue and Betrothed and Squicky Poetry, we've got a lot of fics in the works that are romantic or at least dealing with love and lust. So this might become more of an option a bit later, when the romance bug has died down a bit.

I think it might also need some more structure to it. Is this going to be a metafic, à la If Women had Ruled Middle-earth or Real Men Wear Jewelry?

Or is it supposed to occur within a canonical setting, i.e., the only character to talk to would be contemporary figures who were friends and family?

If we get that worked out, then there's the question of trying to make give this a bit more form--something to make it stand out from the run of the mill sour-romance fics. Some suggestions:

What about borrowing an idea from Citizen Kane? You have four vignette scenes, all set in one location (kitchen, bedroom, kids' room, the apple tree, where ever is logical for the characters in question), to trace the decline of the relationship.

Or you could have one of the wronged characters telling his or her story to a group of children--happily ever after... but not. Do it in a way that the character distills the essence of what went wrong and casts it in a simplified form (names changed, of course, or using stereotyped roles, like "the Princess" and "the Handsome Knight") to illustrate a lesson.

 

Sorry about being so vague. I was thinking this might be something like "Real Men Wear Jewelry" where people are just all in a group and chatting. But, you did come up with a good idea with those vignettes. I suppose each one of them could tell the others a certain story about their relationship. Again, sorry about being so vague. I'm always coming up with really incredibly stupid ideas like this.

 

No, it's ok, don't apologize. This is "Prospective Challenges", after all, meaning the ideas are just being flung about for interest and to see how they might be put together to make a challenge others would be interested in writing. Part of the fun of this is learning how to take those vague nuzgul and give them a form that is specific enough to answer a particular concern, yet broad enough to allow for fun variations on theme.

Keep working on it. For future info, there's also Meg, with the Nuzgul Hutch discussion. If you're having trouble framing an idea, she's willing to help out as well, especially if you mean to put the idea in the Hutch.

 

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