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Reflections from the Paradise of Elves  by Bodkin 3 Review(s)
Rose SaredReviewed Chapter: 18 on 6/19/2004
Oh this is my favorite one so far, the voices and emotions just ran so true, along with the reported wives reactions to normal male behaviour. Lovely, youre elves are so male but so sweet, your elfling is perfect and the wives, off stage, make me want to hug them. You go girls!
Rose

Author Reply: Ah, thank you. I was doubtful about this one - it seemed rather serious compared to most. But that's the thing about their little get togethers - often they are about insulting each other and having a laugh, but sometimes real life intrudes and they have to be serious.

I'm glad you like them all.

I've just realised the elfling needs a name now! Finding names takes for ever!

Jay of LasgalenReviewed Chapter: 18 on 6/19/2004
'Where no elf has gone before'. I think that the twins and Legolas, used to their own realms, would find the restrictions of paradise too confining. They need to spread out and make their own space. Founding their own realms (again) will remove Legolas from the pressures of Noldor in-laws. It's like children living at home, suddenly moving and setting up their own house.

Jay

Author Reply: I think Valinor would have seemed like a very organised kindergarten to the elves of ME - and that they might have seemed a bunch of savages to the locals. (Possibly part of the reason the in-laws don't care for Legolas?) As a group they need to move out and establish themselves - it's taken a long time for some of them to get round to the idea, but time doesn't really count here.

It would be the leaders who would feel the need most strongly, I should think. They don't have anything to lead just now. (Can you imagine Thranduil with nothing to occupy him?) If you are, say, a gardener, it can't matter to you that much where you are growing your roses, but kings need kingdoms.

daw the minstrelReviewed Chapter: 18 on 6/19/2004
I just finished writing a few sentence about the relation of grown elves to their parents and I came over here to find this! It's interesting, isn't it? Elves were organized in houses, so I think the bonds of family were very strong and not to be easily shaken off. That must have made for a slightly different kind of idea of adulthood, some sort of self-confidence that didn't involve moving away from your family, by and large, or even out from your parents' rule in a lot of things.

Author Reply: Moving out from your parents' rule - I think that must always be especially difficult in aristocratic families, where offspring are, by birth, part of the family business. (Like your Legolas.) At least in human terms, there is an automatic progression, but with elves, they would be born to be perpetual heirs - needing to be up to speed on how to rule, but, barring disaster, never having to take over. It seems to have more link to the kind of Italian famiglia than to the nuclear family.

The whole society has quite a medieval feel to it - a feudal system of obligation and lordship. I suppose we accept what is traditional in our societies without thinking about it much. (Excuse the random thoughts.)

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