An Intense Dislike of Elves by Himring

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Fanwork Notes

Straight to the Heart

Many thanks to Silver Trails for the Token!

Fanwork Information

Summary:

 

Amlach seems to be the only one of the early Edain who is explicitly said to have entered the service of Maedhros, so he may have been the first of Men to do so and he may have gone to Himring alone. This story imagines the feelings of an Adan who originally opposed the Eldar and now finds himself spending his life among them, all on his own.

It also tries to answer the question why he picked Maedhros specifically as his prospective leader and whether Maedhros fulfilled his expectations.

I decided it might just about fit the Follow the Leader challenge.

Major Characters: Amlach, Maedhros

Major Relationships:

Genre: General

Challenges: Follow the Leader

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Violence (Moderate)

This fanwork belongs to the series

Doom, Gloom and Maedhros
Chapters: 5 Word Count: 6, 385
Posted on 11 July 2010 Updated on 11 July 2010

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

Comments

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 I really admire your talent to take a very minor character and transform him into a well-rounded person with a background and a life of his own while you tell a story that has so many themes:  the passing of time and how Elves and Men live it, the contrast between youthful expectations and adult achievements (or lack of them), the difference (or lack o f them) between Elves and Men, the role of a leader and of a father, the working of memory in elves (when Maedhros can repeat the interview word by word while Amlach has forgotten most of it) And how the grestest stories (the great eagle) have become some kind of hazy unbelievable legend for men - though the participants are still around. Really wonderful.

Your Maedhros, whether the story is romance or war, whether he's with Fingon or his brothers or somebody else, is always irresistible.

By virtue of reading this fic, I've found that I somehow managed to miss a page and a half out of The Silmarillion. O.o? Maybe I just never cared about the smelly humans before? Regardless, I found the requisite passage and read it, finding I had no recollection of ever having done so before; it was completely new to me. Odd, since I've read the book all the way through three times to date.

Your Maedhros intrigues me to no end, but what I really loved was the subtle jab in one of the earlier chapters, that if you find the blood of your kin dripping off your sword you can be sure that your a servant of Morgoth. That line was... wow. Amazing.

I also loved getting a glimpse at the Eldar (particularly Nelyo) through the eyes of a mortal. The dynamic and interplay of cripples, care-takers and dependents, father and son, really... also wow. Amazinf ending paragraphs.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

Thank you very much for another lovely review! I don't think many people are interested in Amlach. But his is really quite an intriguing story--although I'm not sure I would have noticed that myself, if I hadn't been thinking about ways of writing about Maedhros from different points of view. I read another fanfic about Amlach once (on the Henneth Annun site?), but it took quite a different attitude to both Amlach and Maedhros, and for some reason I haven't been able to find it again.

Thank you very much also for telling me that that comment of Maedhros's about servants of Morgoth works! I was a bit worried about it.

Your concluding paragraphs are really amazing and thought-provoking. I had always believed the Eldar were lucky to be immortal, but after reading your story I realized the same thing also means the first-age Noldor in Middle-Earth could not expect a natural death like human. The end of all those soldiers, if they ever met it, would be gory and painful. It made me feel a bit sad and almost sympathetic towards them. 

Tolkien called death a Gift to Men, although he sometimes seems to have had to work hard at seeing it that way himself--if you look at the last words of Arwen to Aragorn, for example. Most of those soldiers are going to meet a gory and painful end at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad or, if not there, then at Doriath or Sirion. And they sort of know it, too, because they heard the Doom of Mandos in Araman.

Thank you so much for reading and commenting!

This is really interesting and I especially loved this line - 

'But then, I hadn’t ever met anybody quite like him before—certainly not those Eldarin followers of Finrod who descended on us with the best of intentions, determined to bring the light of knowledge to our benighted selves.' 

 

I could certainly imagine the elves wanting to teach what humans must have seemed to them, children who knew barely anthing. 

 

 

When Finrod first encounters Beor and his group, he is already very much in teaching mode. His harp playing is clearly meant to teach and inform as much as delight. It was not for nothing that they named him "Wisdom". I think his followers would have shared some of his attitudes.

I'm glad you found things to interest you in this story! Thank you very much for reading and reviewing!