THE JOYS OF A BEARD
by Soledad
Disclaimer: Not mine, all Tolkien’s, except the Mary Sue and the weird plot. Sue me, and you’ll be given the Sue – pardon the really bad pun.
Rating: Starting with G and going upwards. No idea yet how high it might become. I’ll give the rating separately by every new chapter.
Summary: This is the ultimative 10th-Walker story, set in the early phases of LOTR’s creation, as demonstrated in the HoME-books 6-10. Warnings: Mary Sue, slash and slight crazyness.
Genre: Drama/Romance of the worst sort. No intended humor whatsoever!!!
INTRODUCTION
(Boring, I know, but necessary. Do us both the favour and read it, instead of nitpicking on me afterwards. Otherwise, I’d be righteously annoyed, and you don’t want me to send my pet Balrog after you. He’s a nasty little fellow.)
This story was inspired by a discussion on the Axe & Bow mailing list, considering the question why there are so few Legoals/Gimli slash stories. One of the group members said that part of the problem was of aesthetical nature. After all, has anybody ever seen a Mary Sue chasing Gimli?
Well, I’m not particularly fond of Legolas/Gimli slash (even though I’ve read some beautifully-written stories), but a good challenge is a good challenge every day. So, here you have your ultimative 10th-Walker, Mary Sue, Legolas/Gimli slash story, complete with a rebellious Elven princess and her super powers and stuff. As Deborah could tell you, I strongly dislike the label ’’slash’’, for it has become an equivalent of badly written, pointless smut, but this time it’s fitting. Well, I hope not the badly written part, but the story is rather pointless, honestly. Hey, it is a Mary Sue, after all!
Nevertheless, it’s not a parody. One of the most important traits of a Mary Sue is that it’s taken very seriously, and I have tried to follow the guidelines of creating a honest, original, down-to-Middle-earth Mary Sue religiously, while keeping the general story of the Ring Quest. All humour that might emerge comes from the fact that the Mary Sue is there in the first place.
However, the story settings might be a little confusing, since the books I am folllowing here are not the final, published trilogy but the earlier drafts Christopher Tolkien gifted upon us in the HoME-books(1) 6-10 Many of the descriptions and the dialogues are vastly different from those of the LOTR-books, but are genuine Tolkien lines nevertheless, quoted more or less directly. Even some of the names – those characters or places – are different. For example, Aragorn (or Ingold son of Ingrim in our case) is called Trotter instead of Strider, though I kept him a human, even if he had been a hobbit for quite some time in Tolkien’s imagination.
There also will be an Appendix where I list up the changes and also give you a visual, casting (or recasting) some of the characters.
Oh yes, the name of the Mary Sue has been created with the help of the insanely funny Middle-earth name engine on the barrowdowns website.
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(1) The History of Middle-earth, edited and published by Christopher Tolkien.
The volumes of a total of 12 I used for this fic are:
Volume 6: The Return of the Shadow
Volume 7: The Treason of Isengard
Volume 8: The War of the Ring
Volume 9: Sauron Defeated
My heartfelt thanks to Nemis who offered to beta-read this insanity and encouraged me to post it.