Oh, friend! I nearly forgot to send YOU asks for the WIP Game! Could you tell me a bit about "End of Angband" and "Here's to the ones who dream", please?? <3
Here's to the Ones Who Dream is a longfic (with the obvious disclaimer that my standards for 'longfic' are probably somewhat shorter than most people's) about Faramir. I've started on it a year and a half ago tbh 😅 and now what I've got (about his childhood) is in the middle of a rewrite and then I have to bring up his relationship with Gandalf, and his scholarly pursuits... and as always I find I don't know how far into his life it's supposed to go -- maybe the beginning of his military life? It's written in the context of his own reminiscences and right now I'm experimenting with tense and person, so it's kind of in the stage of being a playbox for my own headcanons, but I think it deserves a honourable mention for being one of the oldest fics I haven't wholly abandoned.
The title is a reference to his dreams (the specific kind Faramir is famous for) which are focused on a lot, at least in the early bits as I first envisaged them.
End Of Angband in its first iteration focuses on two of my OCs: Díriel (M, Noldo) and Lóreth (F, Silvan-Sindarin) who are both thralls in Angband; it's told from the POV of Díriel and spans from his capture (and meeting with Lóreth) to the downfall of Morgoth.
In case you're wondering... they're not a couple, but they're not not a couple either - Angband is absolutely not conductive to forming relationships, but do they end up being the light in a dark place for eachother...? yeah. And after the First Age it develops somewhat bittersweetly with Díriel returning to Valinor with the Host of the West and Lóreth going on to help found Rivendell one day... and they both feel a little unrequited longing "but after all they're not lovers so..."
(They absolutely will get together in the Fourth Age but there's a long way between now and then)
That said, while I've grown attached to the two I have doubts whether they're really conductive to the goal I actually want to achieve here, so the second itineration of the project I'm debating on is just a one shot about the War of Wrath from the perspective of an anonymous thrall.
...It takes a lot from my WW2 reading and the impression I get from concentration camp memoirs (and one specific memoir in particular) when they talk about the very end of the war -- I'm not denying that some of the most horrible atrocities happened while the camps were being dismantledz but on the other hand there is often this sense of who's winning the war being an open secret and this chaos beyond enemy lines and... it's not eucatastrophe because terrible things are still happening but it causes similar feelings in me and it's fascinating to read about.
(I hope it's not disrespectful per se to have something so awful inspire your fantasy writing, but on the other hand all fantasy is inspired by irl history, and it's not like this isn't my own national heritage so...)