Travis's 5 Fan Fiction Links Draft

Lord of the Rings Fan Fiction:

A Blankie and a Fauntling

This short story is a fluff piece about a young version of Frodo (the main character in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) finding his mother asleep without a blanket to cover her feet. So he puts his blanket over her being careful not to wake her. That's it.

Personally, I like my stories a little more poignant or at least exciting. So while this story bored me, I did appreciate that the author was able to use fan fiction to express their own personal and valid taste in story telling through the Lord of the Rings franchise. Having said that, even though the story was mundane and short it still included all the vital elements of story telling. It had an introduction, a conflict and a resolution, and it weaved them together in a way that made you feel for the protagonist.

A Brother's Bond

This piece of fan fiction takes place long before the events of Lord of the Rings. It involves two sons squabbling for the love and respect of their father. Boromir, the elder brother undermines his younger brother, Faramir's attempt to impress their father, which ultimately causes the two brothers to reasses their relationship. Boromir regrets humiliating Faramir and reswears a vow to protect his younger brother. At the end of the story we learn that this story was a letter written by Boromir years later during the events of the Lord of the Ring trilogy in which Boromir died. Reading the letter helps Faramir bring closure to the life and death of his older brother.

I liked this story for several reasons. I liked how it used events that happened before and after the standard Lord of the Rings storyline to bring more life to the characters. The story was fairly well written, and you felt for the characters. However, I think the author could have been a little more subtle about trying to pull at the reader's heart strings. This story could benefit from a few more drafts.

A Dangerous Couple of Days

This story takes place before the Lord of the Rings series when Aragorn served his kingdom as a ranger, which is sort of like a cross between a park ranger, a police officer and a special forces soldier. In the story he kills a deer, eats it and then kills some goblins.

"A Dangerous Couple of Days" is a prime example of bad fan fiction. I would guess the author is between 14 and 16 years old. The author attempted to explore unwritten life of Aragorn before he was crowned a king, which was a good idea; I'd love to know more about what Aragon's life was like before he was crowned king. However, the story has no plot line. It includes pointless information that only serves to drag the story out. The fight scene is so poorly described, and you don't care the protagonist overcomes the conflict at the end. You're just glad the story is over so you don't have to endure the author's amatuer attempt at writing anymore.

Not the Beard!

This story is about Legolas, the elf meeting Gandalf for the first time. The story takes place before the events of the Lord of the Rings trilogy when Legolas was a small child. Since Elves don't have facial hair, Legolas thinks Gandalf's beard is eating his face and is afraid of it. The end of the story jumps foreward in time to a point in the Lord of the Rings trilogy when Gandalf is thought to have died. Legolas is asked by his friends how he first met Gandalf, and he refuses to give a direct answer out of embarassement.

The story isn't terrible, but it does have several fatal flaws. Gandalf's character is inconsistent. He's portrayed as an emotionally distant old man as well as a play-friend to all children. None of the other characters, including Legolas, are developed well enough for the reader to connect to. The worst flaw though, was that the leap forward in time happens without any notice. So the reader loses track of what's going on and has to stop and figure out what the author failed to explain.

If the Middle Earth Entered the 21st Century

The protagonist of this story is Arassuil II, who was invented by the fan fiction author to be the grandson of Aragorn, the character who is crowned king at the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This story takes place in the 21st centry. Arassuil is visited by a character named Kathy, who is a representitive of the United Nations. She makes a lot of politically correct demands of the king that he reacts to like an old man who is out of touch with modern times. He rejects all of the demands and the story ends.

I was excited to read a story that took the Lord of the Rings franchise into the modern world. However, this story failed to satisfy. There was no purpose to it. It simply has one character name dropping a bunch of modern concepts to a group of fantasy characters who act out of touch with a world they must have grown up in. At the end one character even says, "I am content in the Fourth Age....This 21st century is far too confusing for me." The characters didn't travel in time. So this would be like a 30 year old man today all of a sudden saying, "I wish this were 500B.C. I don't understand life in 2011A.D." It makes no sense.