![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I have been doing the fan flashworks challenges for a while now, but have been very remiss in posting them anywhere else once the challenge period is over. So I am gradually getting them up on AO3, and posting about them here.
Gradations is reasonably new (October 2016), Titan Clock is not so new (Oct 2015).
Title: Titan Clocks
Fandom: Doctor Who, Doctrine of Labyrinths
Rating: G
Length: 225
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Icka for encouragement & sanity-checking. Crossover with Doctrine of Labyrinths.
Originally posted on fan flashworks here for the challenge 'Dirty', 20 Oct 2015.
On AO3 here: Titan Clock
Summary: The Seventh Doctor and Ace face off against a Titan Clock
Titan Clock
"Time, why is there never time?"
In a world with gargantuan, arcane, Titan clocks, one would think the opposite, but oh, one would be wrong. Neither time nor direction were ordinary here, as the Tardis had tried to tell him. And he, of course, had not listened. The elaborate compass spun, and behind it the little cogs and gears and wheels clicked and whirred. None of the hands on the tiny, grimy clock-faces moved. Overhead, the great and intricate machinery was loomingly silent, dust and shadows hovering, revealing a glint of untarnished metal here, a tiny bone escapement there. The old air smelt of screams. That was just wrong. General wrongness was par for the course. But this was a specific wrongness. Specific to this world, these Clocks. These despairing places. A single 'snick!' sounded, sharpness muffled by the corresponding "Oi!" from the same direction, and both were swallowed by the weight of darkness.
Oh, of course. The Titan Clocks ate time, and in doing so, accreted a kind of gravity that drew things to them, unwilling.
Something would need to be done about that.
"Ace? I think we will need some of that nitro-whatever-number-you-are-up-to that you aren't carrying."
"Coming right up, Professor!"
Title: Gradations
Fandom: Hobbit, LotR, Silmarillion
Rating: G
Length: 400
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgan, and sundry others for thought-provoking discussion.
First posted to fan-flashworks here for the challenge 'Station', 20 Oct 2016.
On AO3 here: Gradations
Summary: Four drabbles on the subject of rank and station among the servants of the Enemy
Gradations
For all that Morgoth was an agent of ruin and chaos, his mind was one of strict and rigid hierarchy, order, place, especially as regarded that which and those who did his bidding and worked his will. His was the supreme, pre-eminent, unquestionably ultimate authority, the foremost power. Willing allies, the maiar he gathered to him (spirits of indeed no small might: balrogs and dragons, minds of cunning skill and subtle, quick, keen perception, audacious devisors) were little less than he, but still, less, beneath, beholden to his desires, subject to his will, however much latitude might be given them.
The unwitting allies — deceived, cozened, coerced, compelled — were lesser yet, though largely allowed autonomy in things that did not touch on the greater plans of their betters. In those ranks counted the Men of the South and East, the Haradrim and Khandrim, the folk of Rhun and further distant from the West. Morgoth — and later Sauron — assumed a great deal about these people, not least of which was the depth and nature of their commitment to the cause of darkness. The annals of the Elves are scant and not unbiased on the subject of the Enemy’s subjugation of those lands.
Of the orcs, goblins, trolls, fell beasts, wargs and other spawn of greater servants (Shelob’s lesser decedents the most notable, but not the only), they ranked themselves with jealous ferocity. Azog and his ilk, little removed from tormented Elven forbearers, stood high by virtue of cunning, strength and favor in the Enemy’s eyes. (Well for the fate of Middle-Earth that the line fell to Aüle’s Children before the gates of Erebor.) These were feeling beings, thinking, breathing, in some manner born, capable of growth and change, and all the more frightening for that. But true choice was not given them.
Last, and most certainly least, were the vast ranks of foot-soldiers, clods of mud shaped into weapons, sterile, mindless, without will or desire or spirit of their own, animate only as infinitesimal motes of Morgoth’s malice and desire to conquer the troublesome, persistent striving of Eru’s children (Elves, Men, and most certainly Dwarves), lacking even rudimentary processes of life or thought. Clockwork midges, whatever their apparent size, made, not born, or grown, or properly created as complex, feeling beings. Without Morgoth’s (later Sauron’s) will to drive them, they would swiftly disintegrate back into the elements from whence they were assembled.
Gradations is reasonably new (October 2016), Titan Clock is not so new (Oct 2015).
Title: Titan Clocks
Fandom: Doctor Who, Doctrine of Labyrinths
Rating: G
Length: 225
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Icka for encouragement & sanity-checking. Crossover with Doctrine of Labyrinths.
Originally posted on fan flashworks here for the challenge 'Dirty', 20 Oct 2015.
On AO3 here: Titan Clock
Summary: The Seventh Doctor and Ace face off against a Titan Clock
Titan Clock
"Time, why is there never time?"
In a world with gargantuan, arcane, Titan clocks, one would think the opposite, but oh, one would be wrong. Neither time nor direction were ordinary here, as the Tardis had tried to tell him. And he, of course, had not listened. The elaborate compass spun, and behind it the little cogs and gears and wheels clicked and whirred. None of the hands on the tiny, grimy clock-faces moved. Overhead, the great and intricate machinery was loomingly silent, dust and shadows hovering, revealing a glint of untarnished metal here, a tiny bone escapement there. The old air smelt of screams. That was just wrong. General wrongness was par for the course. But this was a specific wrongness. Specific to this world, these Clocks. These despairing places. A single 'snick!' sounded, sharpness muffled by the corresponding "Oi!" from the same direction, and both were swallowed by the weight of darkness.
Oh, of course. The Titan Clocks ate time, and in doing so, accreted a kind of gravity that drew things to them, unwilling.
Something would need to be done about that.
"Ace? I think we will need some of that nitro-whatever-number-you-are-up-to that you aren't carrying."
"Coming right up, Professor!"
Title: Gradations
Fandom: Hobbit, LotR, Silmarillion
Rating: G
Length: 400
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgan, and sundry others for thought-provoking discussion.
First posted to fan-flashworks here for the challenge 'Station', 20 Oct 2016.
On AO3 here: Gradations
Summary: Four drabbles on the subject of rank and station among the servants of the Enemy
Gradations
For all that Morgoth was an agent of ruin and chaos, his mind was one of strict and rigid hierarchy, order, place, especially as regarded that which and those who did his bidding and worked his will. His was the supreme, pre-eminent, unquestionably ultimate authority, the foremost power. Willing allies, the maiar he gathered to him (spirits of indeed no small might: balrogs and dragons, minds of cunning skill and subtle, quick, keen perception, audacious devisors) were little less than he, but still, less, beneath, beholden to his desires, subject to his will, however much latitude might be given them.
The unwitting allies — deceived, cozened, coerced, compelled — were lesser yet, though largely allowed autonomy in things that did not touch on the greater plans of their betters. In those ranks counted the Men of the South and East, the Haradrim and Khandrim, the folk of Rhun and further distant from the West. Morgoth — and later Sauron — assumed a great deal about these people, not least of which was the depth and nature of their commitment to the cause of darkness. The annals of the Elves are scant and not unbiased on the subject of the Enemy’s subjugation of those lands.
Of the orcs, goblins, trolls, fell beasts, wargs and other spawn of greater servants (Shelob’s lesser decedents the most notable, but not the only), they ranked themselves with jealous ferocity. Azog and his ilk, little removed from tormented Elven forbearers, stood high by virtue of cunning, strength and favor in the Enemy’s eyes. (Well for the fate of Middle-Earth that the line fell to Aüle’s Children before the gates of Erebor.) These were feeling beings, thinking, breathing, in some manner born, capable of growth and change, and all the more frightening for that. But true choice was not given them.
Last, and most certainly least, were the vast ranks of foot-soldiers, clods of mud shaped into weapons, sterile, mindless, without will or desire or spirit of their own, animate only as infinitesimal motes of Morgoth’s malice and desire to conquer the troublesome, persistent striving of Eru’s children (Elves, Men, and most certainly Dwarves), lacking even rudimentary processes of life or thought. Clockwork midges, whatever their apparent size, made, not born, or grown, or properly created as complex, feeling beings. Without Morgoth’s (later Sauron’s) will to drive them, they would swiftly disintegrate back into the elements from whence they were assembled.