The Peril (and Potential) of Unleashing Lightning in a Fishbowl by Dawn Felagund

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Fanwork Notes

This story was written for the Competition challenge, for the song Hard Rock Hallelujah (lyrics), inspired by the style of the song and somewhat by the lyrics, particularly the reference to lightning.

This story is part of the Republic of Tirion series, set somewhat earlier than most of the stories in the series so far. You don't need to be familiar with the other stories in the series to understand this one, but the series summary will provide some useful context:

It is Aman. It is the Fifth Age. Finally left to his own devices, Finarfin has decided to show his own radical streak, unkinged himself, and established representative democracy in Tirion against the will of the Valar. Adding to the crazy, all his exiled, slain relatives are beginning to return from Mandos ...

Since the story is set in Aman, I use Quenya names. A helpful cheatsheet can be found in the endnotes.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Caranthir is a socially awkward public servant and Amarië is a politically radical performance artist when a prestigious battle of the bards entices them to come together in an unexpected friendship that produces an even less-expected new musical genre. Part of the Republic of Tirion series but you don't have to be familiar with the other stories to understand this one. Also featuring the printing press, underground nightclubs, an electric guitar, and Caranthir's bitchy resting face.

Major Characters: Amarië, Caranthir, Nerdanel

Major Relationships:

Genre: Drama, General

Challenges: Competition

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Sexual Content (Mild), Violence (Mild)

This fanwork belongs to the series

Republic of Tirion
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 11, 955
Posted on 5 July 2018 Updated on 5 July 2018

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

The Peril (and Potential) of Unleashing Lightning in a Fishbowl

Comments

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Good to see your Carnistir again! And now he's become an inventor and a rock star! Or a musical scandal...

I was glad to see Amarie and him become allies, that old love surviving all the changes and becoming something less distant. Of course, it's also good that they don't agree on everything, because how could they?

I also enjoyed the other transformations of things and places from the Years of the Trees, the lowest circle, the roses...

I was moved by that bit about the printing press,  how he based the fonts on his family's hands, to seek their voices.

He does need another job. Surely someone can tell Arafinwe, if he can't do so himself?

 

Thanks for reading and comment, Himring! ^_^ Especially since this ended up much longer than I expected! I was hoping to show that Caranthir discovered Amarie was not the woman he once thought she was, but he comes to love (not romantically but nonetheless) her and accept her ... he goes on about the role acceptance plays in his own marriage but doesn't, of course, really perceive when it is happening here. Of course, she is also transformed, even though he is dismissive of this possibility. But they end up having more in common than he believed.

I agree--he needs a new job! :D Although this time, the opportunities that job handed him worked out well enough.

Thank you again! :)

This is so striking. Caranthir's lonlieness, the way he is torn between a Fifth Age Aman that has moved on, with its university and republic and jobs, and the piercing memories of the First Age long lost.

A a reader of so many of your past stories, I love the way there are subtle threads of them all over--like the callback to how Caranthir had a sort of telepathy and precognition. Yet those threads are half-hidden in a narrative about the mundane. And Fifth Age Valinor seems to be ALL about the mundane.

Re Caranthir and Amarie's performance art: it's lovely how in her rebellion against the conventional she makes a connection to this life-long outsider, and brings him into a performance that one might have thought would be the least likely place for him to shine.

And, his invention! Has he discovered a sort of Theremin? I love the way you have technologies get reinvented in a very Elven way.

I have to admit that these Republic of Tirion stories are a pure indulgence for me! The chance to weave in some of my favorite elements from other stories (not really having to care that they fit in with a particular verse) and getting to throw in odd modern elements like battles of the bands and carnival rides and middle schools. :D

I was hoping for exactly that idea about Amarie and her acceptance and even protectiveness of Caranthir, so thank you for noticing and mentionging that. It also brings his arc in my personal verse, where Amarie is concerned, to a kind of resolution too. (Even though most of this material is unwritten and only vaguely hinted at in my other work; Caranthir's entire characterization began for me from wondering, "Why the animosity toward the House of Finarfin, of all people, who seem a pretty likeable bunch?")

Re: his "lightning and magnets" musical instrument, I was thinking much more mundanely (appropriately enough! :) as an electric guitar pickup, but since I never get into specifics, a Theremin could work as well. I have to admit that I was entirely unfamiliar with that before this comment!

Thank you so much for reading and especially for commenting! ^_^

Cracks in the glittering (if mundane) surface of the Republic of Tirion! I love the new details about this intriguing experiment that you bring out with every new story in this setting. Figures that Amarie would be among those demonstrating for better working conditions! (How sad that even the Eldar need such measures! But then, they don't really have much experience with human - and humane - self-government, and the Valarin example, though Nerdanel still looks up to it, isn't altogether useful for less divine creatures...) I loved the allusions to your older stories. Glad that Nelyo's roses are finally being appreciated.

Carnistir's inventive side was really interesting to see - and I laughed out loud at the idea of a proto-Roomba! I suspect this would be marketable now, when household servants are probably a lot less common than they used to be in the old Noldorin kingdom...
(Also, Carnistir's nervous habits make my fingernails hurt just from reading about them! Ouch!)

Since you asked, this does feel different from other stories of yours that come to mind - though whether it's because Carnistir is very different from other characters, or whether it's due to the mode of writing, I couldn't say for certain!

Thank you so much, Lyra--such a kind comment! I've always imagined (and sometimes alluded to) Caranthir as the untalented but practical son of Feanor where his everyday work was concerned, but I have to admit that I took it to a new extreme in this one. :D (I am curious how these Republic of Tirion stories will affect my regular verse ... like I have fallen in love with Amarie. I don't think I can write her now without at least alluding to that revolutionist streak in her. And now I may need to allude to the proto-Roomba at some point too ...)

I have the finger-chewing habit I gave Caranthir! Probably why I can write it in such wincing detail. :D As a kid, I used to bite my nails but was blessed/cursed with unusually hard nails, so as I got older, they started chipping my teeth, so I turned to the skin around my fingers; I can assess my stress level by how many of my fingers are bitten to the point where they've started to bleed. It actually doesn't hurt, which is probably why I started doing it in the first place. When I was a teenager, my mom used to threaten that I'd wind up with an awful infection and have to have a finger amputated, but so far, I still have all ten. (They're all whole right now too because, of course, it is summer break and I'm not particularly stressed over anything.)

Thanks for responding to my question! I'm probably going to resume the 15-minute experiment beginning today, so I'll be interested to see if the story/ies that come of it also feel different. (I also worried that my Caranthir wasn't Caranthir enough--I've set a pretty high bar for weirdness for this guy--so this comment is reassuring in that regard too.)

Thank you again! <3

Left a comment at ao3 but realized you are here more often so posting commentary here too!

What a fascinating fic. I really am enjoying your Republic of Tirion series.
I have such a soft spot for Carnistir. I love how you write him-his sensitivity to others, his prescience, his skill at flying under the radar in a family of overachievers. His creativity produces efficient and useful devices but he also has a unique ability to subvert the existing ideas into something new and unexpected. Like an electric guitar or a Roomba!
I really liked his thoughts back on Beleriand and how again he managed to somehow be less scarred by it all, in comparison to his siblings. A wife, children, a lovely place to live, alliances with fascinating neighbors and proximity to his brothers. Death before it got to the horrible end. I wondered initially in your other fics that you had him as the first to return but it makes so much sense.
Makalaurë writing his rages down and presenting a sanguine, even tempered outward temperament to the world that was in direct opposition to what his family experienced of him was a lovely detail.
Carnistir's recollections of Nelyo made me melancholy--somehow there is always some small detail that makes Nelyo more vulnerable. Something he attempts to hide but that is clear to his brother.
Amarie is a force of nature--her advocacy and her ingenuity and passion.
The part that brought me to tears though--papering his room with the written words of his family. Recreating the cacophony of that vibrant, vociferous, chaotic existence with their printed words--it really struck me as a visceral loss and the faded paper echoes cocoon him in his small abode. Really lovely image.

(I will also copy in my reply from AO3. :)

Thank you so much for reading and commenting! ^_^ Carnistir is probably my favorite character to write because of his weirdness in my verse ... which started fourteen years ago when I wondered why in the world he had such animosity for the sons of Arafinwe and ended with the construction of this character who has endured and become beloved to me over the ensuing years.

I try to look at the Feanorians' lives and lands without the biased angle we get in The Silmarillion and, frankly, Thargelion sounds pretty darned nice. :D A lot like where I live, actually, at the foot of the mountains and with the wild spaces and lakes, centrally located relative to most of his brothers, getting to meet and form productive relationships with all sorts of people. Pengolodh wrings his hands a lot over Carnistir's outburst to the Arafinwean sons but, in actuality, his realm seems just and even-keeled and generous in its friendship to others. (More like Finrod than anyone! Pengolodh probably would have died and turned to dust to admit that!) When I first started writing Silmfic, there was a persistent fanon of Carnistir as the meanest of the brothers--a fanon that persists, though less doggedly, even now--and I've just never seen evidence of that (so much as evidence that Pengolodh emphasized isolated incidents in an attempt to discredit certain characters, Carnistir chief among them).

Nelyo ... of course I love him and have had a fangirl crush on him for years. ^_^ Tolkien made him so mighty that I have to allow him to be vulnerable from time to time.

I have fallen in love with Amarie through writing this series. Of course, she evolves into the revolutionary she becomes in this series, but I can't help but wonder how I will write her now in the earlier ages, hinting at the potential for what she could become. (And of course Finrod would love someone like her ...)

I'm so glad the detail about the papers worked for you! I liked that one myself. :)

Thanks again for reading and sharing your thoughts with me! <3

 

 

As a reader/writer who rarely touches the Fëanorians (honesty time: it's because I have trouble keeping the who's-who of them all straight in my head, and also because fandom hates them (???) ), I absolutely adored Caranthir in this! He's certainly not the most written-about son of Fëanor, but now I'm in need of ALL the stories about him as an awkward inventor-turned-rockstar. I've seen you talk about this before, but based on your portrayal of him here I do read him as somewhere on the spectrum, and that makes me love him all the more.

Also: Amarië! I'm fascinated by her character. She's certainly kind, as Caranthir points out, but also very charismatic and unique. I love that she's radical but also not an Exile—it changes her experiences and perhaps her motivations to a certain extent. Going along with that, Finarfin's cameos are great, and I would love to read more about him at some point. 

 

(But, honestly, I would also love to read more Republic of Tirion stories in general!)

OH PLEASE write the next chapter to this! I want to hear that crashing electric guitar and see the reaction on their faces. I want to hear the spectacualr amazement of the audience!!

 

This is just the most wonderful Future fic ever- so much to love.

The build up with the flyers Carathir refuses to look at, his awakward shyness and low self esteem that I feel is undeserved and probably only in his mind to a large extent (his reputation for KNOWING stuff), the fact that the sons of Arafinwe bullied him and Arafinwe is trying to 'help' by giving him a job he hates, the innovation and technology- mechanics rather than art- wonderfully written! I love the disparaging way he views invention as by an upstart youth, when in fact he is really really engaged in the same ursuit!

 

Political nuances are so carefully though tout- and examined, not that Caranthir cares- Ifound myself just admirung, as a writer, the world-building, the linking back for example to Nelyos terrible roses from AMC (loved that so much!)

There is the careful examination of the Information desk, designed to appall Caranthir and yet he says nothing, just quietly adapts it to suit him better. Your Caranthir is noe of my very favourite Silm characters. He is complex . modest, unseen (oh but Nerdanel sees him- fell in love with her at that point) and he is talked about -but so unassuming, so unaware that he imagines people staring into the back of his head with hostilty when there is none - and yet at the WONDERFUL Amarië- black fingernail and all- sees his talent and genius- the NEW sound he has created (Iknow I am raving and rambling but honsestly, I loved this so much)

 

But perhaps my favourite moment is that deep poigancy, that sense of loss and longing but hopeful and loving is this:

Under the guise of testing his machine, he printed these onto page after page of paper (the foresters be cursed) and pasted them to the walls of his tiny workshop, layer upon layer, as though surrounding himself with the inked voices of his lost family might approximate the clamor they once brought everywhere with them.

 

Ah- the love in that. The echoes of beloved voices. Made me cry a bit.

 

Beautiful writing. I will come back to this many, many times.

I just wanted to say that I OFTEN think of this fic- espeically if I am watching some rock band or something really great avant-garde performance art. I wish you would write more of this- I watched Home Alone because of your wonderful tribute- your humour is just so wonderful and your writing such high quality. Can you just give up the day job please, whatever it is, and write? Thank you:) 

Alas, I cannot! Even if I could afford to, I would not: I'm a teacher and love my work more than I can put into words. But I'll take the compliment as intended. :D

I will definitely be writing more on this series. "Republic of Tirion" is where my heart is now, in terms of fanfic writing. There is just a lot, even beyond work (running the SWG, my husband and I have a small farm, original fiction, other creative projects), that gets in the way. But when I pick up fanfic again, it will almost certainly be this series!

Thanks as always for reading and commenting. It feels good to have written a story so loved! :D