Xena vs. The Lord of the Rings

Appendix D

Making Of -documentary


I once answered a survey that asked, who would be the best actors to play each role in an upcoming Lord of the Rings movie. This was 1997, or something. I suggested that Lucy Lawless should play Eowyn. Soon after, I started to write Xena fan fiction, and a thought came to me that it would be super cool to have Xena battle the Witchking at the Fields of Pelennor. I had that one scene in mind when I started and, well, then it got a little out of my hands.

I wanted to keep the original map, timeline, and story of LotR as intact as possible as I didn't want to spoil the perfect world of Middle-Earth. I didn't take Potedeia & Amphipolis, and put them in the Middle Earth map in some awkward place, I just took the characters I needed and placed them in existing cities. I tried to find a logical background for them; that's why Gabrielle was born in Staddle, Bree-land, and Xena in Rhosgobel, which both are actual towns in Middle Earth.

The outline of the story was in my mind from the very beginning. The end was very clear to me, even so that I wrote half of parts 8.3 and 9.2 before I even started with chapter 1. However, as I got the story on the way and going, I suddenly realized that my characters are in Lorien and they have months to spare before they have to be in Minas Tirith! So, what to do in the mean time? That was one of the more serious things that troubled me. They can't just lie around the whole time, can they? Another thing was, how to get rid of Argo? I seriously considered killing her off, and I believe it shows.

Well, Xena is Xena, Gabrielle is Gabrielle, and Joxer is Joxer, of course, etc. But when I think about Strider, I see some characteristics of Hercules in him. He is the one man who gave Xena the first push towards Good, and whom Xena looks up to. Strong correspondence.
Then there's the case of Witchking who I identify as Ares in X:WP. If you think about it, you'll see that those two characters have much incommon. And if Ares is Witchking then maybe Sauron is... Dahak?! An intriguing thought, isn't it?
The Elves of Lorien have taken the place of Centaurs as Xena's former enemies and Solan's foster parents. This was just a coincidence, though. I didn't plan it beforehand.
Where's Callisto then? Hmm, I'm sure she's somewhere out there. She and Xena are unseparatable. But she doesn't appear in this story in any form.

One thing that you may notice is that writing the story took tremendously long time. Five years! I'm a slow writer when it comes to English, as it's not my first language. Then I had a few writer's blocks, and even proof reading took more time than expected. I wore out two editors before I found my current one (grin). Special thanks to all of them. Naturally, it would have helped if I hadn't had a life. In the process I learned a lot, even so that I just had to rewrite a great part of part 1. It's still not perfect, and I've no idea whatsoever how reading it feels to one who has spoken English from childhood.

One more thing. If you compare this story to the movies only, and you have not read the book, you may find some inconsistencies. That's because I've written this story according to the book, and there are some differences between the book and the movie.

Any kind of constructive criticism thru e-mail is welcome. If you finished the whole story, then there must have been something that kept your interest. What was it? What bugged you? What would you have made differently? Don't hesitate, send your opinions now! Ja suomi kelpaa kieleksi vallan mainiosti.

Writing this story required:
* one copy of The Lord of the Rings (English)
* one copy of Taru Sormusten Herrasta (Finnish)
* one copy of The Hobbit (English)
* one copy of Hobitti (Finnish)
* five years of my life
* three editors - gods bless them
* hundreds of megabits of network traffic
* one keyboard
* two computer motherboards
* two AMD K6-2 microprocessors
* two ATX power sources
* two SCSI adapters
* two display adapters
* two apartments
* and lots of paranoia when making backups

In plain text format the story takes 621 kilobytes (appendices not included.) It's 114 000 words, or 636 926 characters long. That's a whole lotta writing for someone who's not a professional writer. For comparison, Harry Potter IV (Goblet of Fire) is about 181 000 words, and Tolkien's The Hobbit is only about 97 000 words. (Note: I got the word counts from the internet, and they can be wrong.)

Needless to say I'm pretty proud of myself to have finished this story.

-- Man of Void --